Paul Rubin wrote: > The usual Python idiom for building up a string in approx linear time > is: > > def cstring(n): > ret = [] > while (something): > ret.append(generate_another_character()) > return ''.join(ret) > > Python lists have a special efficiency hack so that ret.append doesn't > copy the whole list around, but rather, allocates space in bigger > chunks so that appending usually takes constant time.
in 2.4 and later, += on strings does the operation in place when possible. this means that += is often faster than append/join. </F> -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
