What is it about the way strings are implemented that makes them so expensive to manipulate?
Is it impossible to make a “cheap” string implementation?
or am I completely wrong in my understanding?
Thanks
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What is it about the way strings are implemented that makes them so expensive to manipulate?
Is it impossible to make a “cheap” string implementation?
or am I completely wrong in my understanding?
Thanks
Which language?
Strings are typically immutable, meaning that any change to the data results in a new copy of the string being created. This can have a performance impact with large strings.
This is an important feature, however, because it allows for optimizations such as interning. Interning reduces the size of text data by pointing identical strings to the same copy of data.
If you are concerned about performance with strings, use a StringBuilder (available in C# and Java) or another construct that works with mutable text data.
If you are working with a large amount of text data and need a powerful string solution while still saving space, look into using ropes.