PATCH: Speed up direct string concatenation by 20+%!

[Robin Becker]

Larry Hastings wrote:
______
> THE PATCH
> 
> The core concept: adding two strings together no longer returns a pure
> "string" object.  Instead, it returns a "string concatenation" object
> which holds references to the two strings but does not actually
> concatenate
> them... yet.  The strings are concatenated only when someone requests
> the
> string's value, at which point it allocates all the space it needs and
> renders the concatenated string all at once.
> 
> More to the point, if you add multiple strings together (a + b + c),
> it *doesn't* compute the intermediate strings (a + b).
> 
> Upsides to this approach:
........

wouldn't this approach apply to other additions eg list+list seq+seq etc 
etc.

I suppose the utility of such an approach depends on the frequency with 
which multiple strings/lists/sequences etc are added together in real code.
-- 
Robin Becker