String concatenations in Python

Sean — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 15:18:15 +0000

Here is an excellent page that compares the efficiencies of various methods for String concatenation in Python. The author uses long lists of integers as the strings to combine, which provides an interesting test case.

The fastest method (according to the article) is:

def method6():
     return ''.join([`num` for num in xrange(loop_count)])

The article also lists the following, more common approach:

def method4():
    str_list = []
    for num in xrange(loop_count):
        str_list.append(`num`)

    return ''.join(str_list)

If I can find the spare time, I would really like to delve deeper in to the underlying reasons why the method6() is faster than the method 4(). In the meantime, I’ll continue to kick myself each time I throw a “+=” operator between two strings.

Why I chose Python over Ruby

Sean — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:58:37 +0000

I’m not one to weigh in on religious debates, but as someone who hops around from server to server I get tired of seeing this:

When I almost always see this:

It’s a matter of convenience for me. It has nothing to do with any of the magic of Ruby, or my sadistic love for the whitespace of Python. Instead, my choice is delegated to me by the sysadmins who control the boxes that I use. On my personal machines I run both interpreters, and often jump between the two languages to keep my skillz up. But, when it comes to production environments I’m a Pythonista.

And I’m OK with that.

Sean Cook » Python

String concatenations in Python

Why I chose Python over Ruby