How naive is Python?

[John Nagle]

skip at pobox.com wrote:
>     John> Sorry, Skip, but I find that very hard to believe. The foo()
>     John> function would take quadratic time if it were merely adding on
>     John> pieces of constant size -- however len(str(i)) is not a constant,
>     John> it is O(log10(i)), so the time should be
>     John> super-quadratic.
> 
> Sorry, I should have pointed out that I'm using the latest version of
> Python.  I believe += for strings has been optimized to simply extend s when
> there is only a single reference to it.

    I'd heard that, but wasn't sure.  That's the kind of answer I was
looking for.

    That kind of optimization is a huge win.

				John Nagle