[Python-ideas] string codes & substring equality

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Fri, Nov 29, 2013 at 07:40:12AM +0100, spir wrote:

> Now, there is a mystery: how is the time for creating a single-char string 
> object about half the time of a simple indexing (in C!)? This just cannot 
> be, can it? 

Of course it can be. What makes you think that creating small strings 
will be expensive? There is some cost, of course, but I expect that 
creating a small string will be very cheap.

Not quite as cheap as C of course, since Python does a lot more for you, 
and creates rich objects rather than just copying low-level bytes, but 
it won't be expensive to take a small slice of a string.


-- 
Steven