Writing huge strings in python

Question

I have a very long string, almost a megabyte long, that I need to write to a text file. The regular

file = open(\"file.txt\",\"w\")
file.write(string)
file.c         


        

Answer 1

ok this is really not an answer it is more to prove your reasoning for the delay wrong

first test write speed of a big string

 import timeit
 def write_big_str(n_bytes=1000000):
     with open("test_file.txt","wb") as f:
          f.write("a"*n_bytes)
 print timeit.timeit("write_big_str()","from __main__ import write_big_str",number=100)

you should see a fairly respectable speed (and thats to repeat it 100 times)

next we will see how long it takes to convert a very big number to a str

import timeit,math
n = math.factorial(200000)
print timeit.timeit("str(n)","from __main__ import n",number=1)

it will probably take ~10seconds (and that is a million digit number) , which granted is slow ... but not hours slow (ok its pretty slow to convert to string :P... but still shouldnt take hours) (well it took more like 243 seconds for my box i guess :P)