Fastest way to remove the first x characters from a very long string

[bruceg113355 at gmail.com]

On Saturday, May 16, 2015 at 10:06:31 AM UTC-4, Stefan Ram wrote:
> bruceg113355 at gmail.com writes:
> >Your approach using .join is what I was looking for.
> 
>   I'd appreciate a report of your measurements.

# Original Approach
# -----------------
ss = ss.split("\n")
ss1 = ""
for sdata in ss:
    ss1 = ss1 + (sdata[OFFSET:] + "\n")


# Chris's Approach
# ----------------
lines = ss.split("\n")
new_text = "\n".join(line[8:] for line in lines)  


Test #1, Number of Characters: 165110
Original Approach: 18ms
Chris's Approach:   1ms

Test #2, Number of Characters: 470763
Original Approach: 593ms
Chris's Approach:   16ms

Test #3, Number of Characters: 944702
Original Approach: 2.824s
Chris's Approach:    47ms

Test #4, Number of Characters: 5557394
Original Approach: 122s
Chris's Approach:   394ms