which is more pythonic/faster append or +=[]

[7stud]

> Is there any documentation for the syntax you used with timeit?

This is the syntax the docs describe:
---
Python Reference Library
10.10.1:

When called as a program from the command line, the following form is
used:

python timeit.py [-n N] [-r N] [-s S] [-t] [-c] [-h] [statement ...]
---

Then in the examples in section 10.10.2, the docs use a different
syntax:

----
% timeit.py 'try:' '  str.__nonzero__' 'except AttributeError:' '
pass'
100000 loops, best of 3: 15.7 usec per loop
% timeit.py 'if hasattr(str, "__nonzero__"): pass'
100000 loops, best of 3: 4.26 usec per loop
% timeit.py 'try:' '  int.__nonzero__' 'except AttributeError:' '
pass'
1000000 loops, best of 3: 1.43 usec per loop
% timeit.py 'if hasattr(int, "__nonzero__"): pass'
100000 loops, best of 3: 2.23 usec per loop
---

and then there is Alex Martelli's syntax:

>>>brain:~ alex$ python -mtimeit 'L=range(3); n=23' 'x=L[:]; x.append(n)'