Lack of time has prevented writing a web page intoducing strings. However, sometimes the best place to get information is from the original source. SGI is a company that implements the standard template library as well as the string class. On their site they have documentation of all the methods of the string class, though the format of the documentation can be somewhat confusing. Your TA will help you figure out how to read the online documentation. It can be found at http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/basic_string.html or by doing a google search with the terms "stl sgi basic_string".
You should familarize yourself with the following methods: