[Python-Dev] Usage of += on strings in loops in stdlib

[Serhiy Storchaka]

On 12.02.13 23:03, Maciej Fijalkowski wrote:
> How people feel about generally not having += on long strings in
> stdlib (since the refcount = 1 thing is a hack)?

Sometimes the use of += for strings or bytes is appropriate. For 
example, I deliberately used += for bytes instead b''.join() (note that 
there is even no such hack for bytes) in zipfile module where in most 
cases one of component is empty, and the concatenation of nonempty 
components only happens once. b''.join() was noticeably slower here.