[erlang-questions] string concatenation efficiency

[Khitai Pang]

Thank you all for your answers.

The concatenated string is a redis key, it will be part of an erlang 
message that will be sent to a redis client erlang process.   I tried 
sending the iolist ["Item:{",ItemId,"}"], and it works fine. I think 
this is the most efficient way.


Thanks
Khitai

On 2016/1/29 9:24, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
>
> On 28/01/16 8:22 pm, Khitai Pang wrote:
>> For string concatenation, which one of the following is the most 
>> efficient?
>>
>> 1)
>> strings:join(["Item:{", ItemID, "}")], ""]
>>
>> 2)
>> lists:append(["Item:{", ItemID, "}")])
>>
>> 3)
>> "Item:{" ++ ItemID ++ "}"
>>
>> Here ItemID is a UUID.
> For something this size, it hardly matters.
>
> The definition of lists:append/1 is
>    append([E])     -> E;
>    append([H|T]) -> H ++ append(T);
>    append([])      -> [].
> so lists:append([A,B,C]) -> A ++ lists:append([B,C])
>                                     -> A ++ B ++ lists:append([C])
>                                     -> A ++ B ++ C.
> Clearly, there is no way for this to be more efficient than
> writing A ++ B ++ C directly.
>
> The definition of string:join/2 is
>    join([], Sep) when is_list(Sep) -> [];
>    join([H|T], Sep)                      ->    H ++ lists:append([Sep 
> ++ X || X <- T]).
> -- at least in 18.1 -- which rather startled me because I was expecting
>    join([E], Sep) when is_list(Sep) -> E;
>    join([H|T], Sep) -> H ++ Sep ++ join(T, Sep);
>    join([], Sep) when is_list(Sep) -> [].
> Clearly, there is no way that either version of join/2 can be faster than
> append/1.  In fact
>  append/1 is measurably faster than
>  the revised join/2, which is measurably faster than
>  the original join/2,
> but you have to push the sizes ridiculously high to make these 
> measurements.
>
> Really, I suggest you write whichever makes your intentions clearest
> to human readers, get the program going, then measure it.  I would
> be surprised if this particular issue made any significant difference.
>
> But why are you using strings at all?
> Strings are an *interface* data type; you process them when you receive
> data from an external source and you generate them (or rather you
> generate iolists) when you are sending data to an external source, but
> for internal processing you usually want some sort of tree.
>
> Seeing "Item:{$ItemID}" suggests that maybe you *are* generating output
> for some external process, but in that case, perhaps you should just be
> sending along the iolist ["Item:{",ItemId,"}"] and *not* concatenating 
> the
> pieces.
>
>
>
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