Question

I need to combine a string along with a list of strings into a tuple so I can use it as a dictionary key. This is going to be in an inner loop so speed is important.

The list will be small (usually 1, but occasionally 2 or 3 items).

What is the fastest way to do this?

Before:

my_string == "foo"
my_list == ["bar", "baz", "qux", "etc"]

After:

my_tuple == ("foo", "bar", "baz", "qux", "etc")

(Note: my_list must not be altered itself).

Answer 1

I can’t speak for performance, but this is definitely the simplest I can think of:

my_tuple = tuple([my_string] + my_list)