import timeit s1 = """ text = "" for i in range(1,50000): text += "12345678901234567890" """ print("str cat 20: {0}s".format(timeit.timeit(s1,number=1))) s2 = """ d = dict() d["text"] = "" for i in range(1,50000): d["text"] += "12345" """ print("dict cat 5: {0}s".format(timeit.timeit(s2,number=1))) s3 = """ d = dict() d["text"] = "" for i in range(1,50000): d["text"] += "1234567890" """ print("dict cat 10: {0}s".format(timeit.timeit(s3,number=1))) s4 = """ d = dict() d["text"] = "" for i in range(1,50000): d["text"] += "12345678901234567890" """ print("dict cat 20: {0}s".format(timeit.timeit(s4,number=1)))