Python equivalent of Java StringBuffer?

Question

Is there anything in Python like Java\'s StringBuffer? Since strings are immutable in Python too, editing them in loops would be inefficient.

Answer 1

Perhaps use a bytearray:

In [1]: s = bytearray('Hello World')

In [2]: s[:5] = 'Bye'

In [3]: s
Out[3]: bytearray(b'Bye World')

In [4]: str(s)
Out[4]: 'Bye World'

The appeal of using a bytearray is its memory-efficiency and convenient syntax. It can also be faster than using a temporary list:

In [36]: %timeit s = list('Hello World'*1000); s[5500:6000] = 'Bye'; s = ''.join(s)
1000 loops, best of 3: 256 µs per loop

In [37]: %timeit s = bytearray('Hello World'*1000); s[5500:6000] = 'Bye'; str(s)
100000 loops, best of 3: 2.39 µs per loop

Note that much of the difference in speed is attributable to the creation of the container:

In [32]: %timeit s = list('Hello World'*1000)
10000 loops, best of 3: 115 µs per loop

In [33]: %timeit s = bytearray('Hello World'*1000)
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.13 µs per loop