String manipulation refers to the process of altering, analyzing, or formatting sequences of characters, known as strings. This can involve tasks like changing the case of letters, extracting specific parts of a string, or combining multiple strings into one. Programmers often use string manipulation to handle text data in applications, making it essential for tasks like user input processing and data formatting. Common operations in string manipulation include concatenation, where two or more strings are joined together, and substring extraction, which allows you to retrieve a portion of a string. Other useful techniques include trimming spaces and replacing certain characters, all of which help in managing and presenting text effectively.