How do you delete characters in a string?

[webmasterpdx]

I need to remove a few characters in a string. I've tried to do it one by one using S(3):=""; but it doesn't work. S(3):="g" does replace a character but not with the null string "". I've tried S(3,1):= but you can't assign a value to this. REPLACE will work but you need to know the string beforehand and it'll replace other occurances of this string.

The only way I can see is to take the string before and after the point I want to remove the chars, and create a new string by appending them. This seems like a lot of work for such a simple task. Anyone know how to just remove a few characters at a known point in a string?