The main reason Java string concatenation is slow is that java strings are immutable. That is, every concatenation operation will create a new string and copy the text of the two input strings.

Perl's strings aren't immutable so if you do: 

$some_long_string .= $some_shorter_string;

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Only the contents of $some_shorter_string needs to be copied.

String file handles have all kinds of overhead and they're more a convenience - I'm surprised the non-oo version is that quick. Object oriented calls are slow in perl anyway relative to function calls.

The join version is pretty slow though. I wouldn't have expected that.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: Is there something faster than string concatenation? by Joost
in thread Is there something faster than string concatenation? by rdj

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