I see many people using format strings like this:
root = "sample"
output = "output"
path = "{}/{}".format(root, output)
Instead of simply concatenating strings like this:
path = root + '/' + output
Do format strings have better performance or is this just for looks?
It's just for the looks. You can see at one glance what the format is. Many of us like readability better than micro-optimization.
Let's see what IPython's %timeit says:
Python 3.7.2 (default, Jan 3 2019, 02:55:40)
IPython 5.8.0
Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590T CPU @ 2.00GHz
In [1]: %timeit root = "sample"; output = "output"; path = "{}/{}".format(root, output)
The slowest run took 12.44 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
1000000 loops, best of 5: 223 ns per loop
In [2]: %timeit root = "sample"; output = "output"; path = root + '/' + output
The slowest run took 13.82 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
10000000 loops, best of 5: 101 ns per loop
In [3]: %timeit root = "sample"; output = "output"; path = "%s/%s" % (root, output)
The slowest run took 27.97 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
10000000 loops, best of 5: 155 ns per loop
In [4]: %timeit root = "sample"; output = "output"; path = f"{root}/{output}"
The slowest run took 19.52 times longer than the fastest. This could mean that an intermediate result is being cached.
10000000 loops, best of 5: 77.8 ns per loop