As far as I know, the only things you can do with strings is cast them to other types and concatenate them. They're rarely the slightest bit useful in Papyrus at the moment, although hopefully
SKSE will be able to improve the situation eventually. Cipscis
I wouldn't call them useless -> The functions that take Strings as input are very useful -> MoveToNode, SplineTranslateToRefNode, AddHavokBallAndSocketConstraint are exceedingly useful for quite a few dynamic effects -> Being able to target Nodes (By name) within .nifs is something that used to take all kinds of work arounds...
Just to give a few examples.
I use MoveToNode for my Organizers -> basically they replace the convoluted bookshelves and weapon stands and by targeting Nodes I can animate their positions for in game options.
I use SplineTranslateToRefNode in several of my custom spells to have the projectiles attack certain parts of the body with different effects.
I use AddHavokBallAndSocketConstraint to dynamically attach Sea Lampreys' (Custom Creature) to the player if they go into a few certain watery areas and the effect is they animate kinda like a leech svcking your health out and the more you have attached the quicker you die.
I also use this in some of my Quest Scene's for Specific actors so they can move objects in the world around without having to create dummy objects -> only have 3 scene's using it ATM but I think that number will explode over time and mod maturity.