[Python-Dev] Usage of += on strings in loops in stdlib

[Christian Tismer]

On 13.02.13 02:09, Alexandre Vassalotti wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 1:44 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net 
> <mailto:solipsis at pitrou.net>> wrote:
>
>     It's idiomatic because strings are immutable (by design, not
>     because of
>     an optimization detail) and therefore concatenation *has* to imply
>     building a new string from scratch.
>
>
> Not necessarily. It is totally possible to implement strings such they 
> are immutable and  concatenation takes O(1): ropes are the canonical 
> example of this.

Ropes have been implemented by Carl-Friedrich Bolz in 2007 as I remember.
No idea what the impact was, if any at all.
Would ropes be an answer (and a simple way to cope with string mutation
patterns) as an alternative implementation, and therefore still justify
the usage of that pattern?

-- 
Christian Tismer             :^)   <mailto:tismer at stackless.com>
Software Consulting          :     Have a break! Take a ride on Python's
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 121     :    *Starship* http://starship.python.net/
14482 Potsdam                :     PGP key -> http://pgp.uni-mainz.de
phone +49 173 24 18 776  fax +49 (30) 700143-0023
PGP 0x57F3BF04       9064 F4E1 D754 C2FF 1619  305B C09C 5A3B 57F3 BF04
       whom do you want to sponsor today?   http://www.stackless.com/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20130213/cad9f55c/attachment-0001.html>