Speed of string += string

[Greg Ewing (using news.cis.dfn.de)]

achrist at easystreet.com wrote:
> Now, which is preferred:
> 
> 	if astring == "":
> 
> or 
> 
> 	if len(astring) == 0:

The first ought to be faster, since it avoids a
global name lookup and a Python function call,
both of which are fairly expensive.

But better still would be simply

   if astring:
     ...

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg