Any reason not to use “+” to concatenate two strings?

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A common antipattern in Python is to concatenate a sequence of strings using + in a loop. This is bad because the Python interpreter has to create a new string object for each iteration, and it ends up taking quadratic time. (Recent versions of CPython can apparently optimize this in some cases, but other implementations can"t, so programmers are discouraged from relying on this.) "".join is the right way to do this.

However, I"ve heard it said (including here on Stack Overflow) that you should never, ever use + for string concatenation, but instead always use "".join or a format string. I don"t understand why this is the case if you"re only concatenating two strings. If my understanding is correct, it shouldn"t take quadratic time, and I think a + b is cleaner and more readable than either "".join((a, b)) or "%s%s" % (a, b).

Is it good practice to use + to concatenate two strings? Or is there a problem I"m not aware of?

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We hope this article has helped you to resolve the problem. Apart from Any reason not to use “+” to concatenate two strings?, check other code Python module-related topics.

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Chen Lehnman

Prague | 2023-04-01

Simply put and clear. Thank you for sharing. Any reason not to use “+” to concatenate two strings? and other issues with time Python module was always my weak point 😁. I just hope that will not emerge anymore

Cornwall Ungerschaft

Shanghai | 2023-04-01

Simply put and clear. Thank you for sharing. Any reason not to use “+” to concatenate two strings? and other issues with PS PHP module was always my weak point 😁. Will use it in my bachelor thesis

Davies Williams

Rome | 2023-04-01

Thanks for explaining! I was stuck with Any reason not to use “+” to concatenate two strings? for some hours, finally got it done 🤗. Checked yesterday, it works!

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