combining two string variables [duplicate]

Answer 1

you need to take out the quotes:

soda = a + b

(You want to refer to the variables a and b, not the strings "a" and "b")

Answer 2

IMO, froadie's simple concatenation is fine for a simple case like you presented. If you want to put together several strings, the string join method seems to be preferred:

the_text = ''.join(['the ', 'quick ', 'brown ', 'fox ', 'jumped ', 'over ', 'the ', 'lazy ', 'dog.'])

Edit: Note that join wants an iterable (e.g. a list) as its single argument.