How does string slicing work in Python?

String slicing in Python is a technique used to extract a specific portion of a string by defining a start index and an end index. It allows you to create a substring that consists of specific characters from the original string. The syntax for slicing is string[start:end], where the substring includes characters from the start index up to, but not including, the end index.

This method does not alter the original string and instead produces a new string that contains the requested slice of characters. As strings in Python are immutable, direct modifications to the original string are not possible, thus reinforcing that slicing is only about extraction rather than modification or concatenation.

Therefore, string slicing provides a convenient way to access parts of a string based on indexing, making it an essential feature for string manipulation in Python programming.