String concatenation vs. interpolation in Ruby

Question

I am just starting to learn Ruby (first time programming), and have a basic syntactical question with regards to variables, and various ways of writing code.

Chris

Answer 1

Here is a full benchmark which also compares Kernel#format and String#+ as it's all methods for construction dynamic string in ruby that I know

Answer 2

Whenever TIMTOWTDI (there is more than one way to do it), you should look for the pros and cons. Using "string interpolation" (the second) instead of "string concatenation" (the first):

Pros:

• Is less typing
• Automatically calls to_s for you
• More idiomatic within the Ruby community
• Faster to accomplish during runtime

Cons:

• Automatically calls to_s for you (maybe you thought you had a string, and the to_s representation is not what you wanted, and hides the fact that it wasn't a string)
• Requires you to use " to delimit your string instead of ' (perhaps you have a habit of using ', or you previously typed a string using that and only later needed to use string interpolation)

Answer 3

@user1181898 - IMHO, it's because it's easier to see what's happening. To @Phrogz's point, string interpolation automatically calls the to_s for you. As a beginner, you need to see what's happening "under the hood" so that you learn the concept as opposed to just learning by rote.

Think of it like learning mathematics. You learn the "long" way in order to understand the concepts so that you can take shortcuts once you actually know what you are doing. I speak from experience b/c I'm not that advanced in Ruby yet, but I've made enough mistakes to advise people on what not to do. Hope this helps.

Answer 4

Both interpolation and concatination has its own strength and weakness. Below I gave a benchmark which clearly demonstrates where to use concatination and where to use interpolation.

require 'benchmark'

iterations = 1_00_000
firstname = 'soundarapandian'
middlename = 'rathinasamy'
lastname = 'arumugam'

puts 'With dynamic new strings'
puts '===================================================='
5.times do
  Benchmark.bm(10) do |benchmark|
    benchmark.report('concatination') do
      iterations.times do
        'Mr. ' + firstname + middlename + lastname + ' aka soundar'
      end
    end

    benchmark.report('interpolaton') do
      iterations.times do
        "Mr. #{firstname} #{middlename} #{lastname} aka soundar"
      end
    end
  end
  puts '--------------------------------------------------'
end

puts 'With predefined strings'
puts '===================================================='
5.times do
  Benchmark.bm(10) do |benchmark|
    benchmark.report('concatination') do
      iterations.times do
        firstname + middlename + lastname
      end
    end

    benchmark.report('interpolaton') do
      iterations.times do
        "#{firstname} #{middlename} #{lastname}"
      end
    end
  end
  puts '--------------------------------------------------'
end

And below is the Benchmark result

Without predefined strings
====================================================
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.170000   0.000000   0.170000 (  0.165821)
interpolaton  0.130000   0.010000   0.140000 (  0.133665)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.180000   0.000000   0.180000 (  0.180410)
interpolaton  0.120000   0.000000   0.120000 (  0.125051)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.140000   0.000000   0.140000 (  0.134256)
interpolaton  0.110000   0.000000   0.110000 (  0.111427)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.130000   0.000000   0.130000 (  0.132047)
interpolaton  0.120000   0.000000   0.120000 (  0.120443)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.170000   0.000000   0.170000 (  0.170394)
interpolaton  0.150000   0.000000   0.150000 (  0.149601)
--------------------------------------------------
With predefined strings
====================================================
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.070000   0.000000   0.070000 (  0.067735)
interpolaton  0.100000   0.000000   0.100000 (  0.099335)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.060000   0.000000   0.060000 (  0.061955)
interpolaton  0.130000   0.000000   0.130000 (  0.127011)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.090000   0.000000   0.090000 (  0.092136)
interpolaton  0.110000   0.000000   0.110000 (  0.110224)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.080000   0.000000   0.080000 (  0.077587)
interpolaton  0.110000   0.000000   0.110000 (  0.112975)
--------------------------------------------------
                 user     system      total        real
concatination  0.090000   0.000000   0.090000 (  0.088154)
interpolaton  0.140000   0.000000   0.140000 (  0.135349)
--------------------------------------------------

Conclusion

If strings already defined and sure they will never be nil use concatination else use interpolation.Use appropriate one which will result in better performance than one which is easy to indent.

Answer 5

If you are using a string as a buffer, I found that using concatenation (String#concat) to be faster.

require 'benchmark/ips'

puts "Ruby #{RUBY_VERSION} at #{Time.now}"
puts

firstname = 'soundarapandian'
middlename = 'rathinasamy'
lastname = 'arumugam'

Benchmark.ips do |x|
    x.report("String\#<<") do |i|
        buffer = String.new

        while (i -= 1) > 0
            buffer << 'Mr. ' << firstname << middlename << lastname << ' aka soundar'
        end
    end

    x.report("String interpolate") do |i|
        buffer = String.new

        while (i -= 1) > 0
            buffer << "Mr. #{firstname} #{middlename} #{lastname} aka soundar"
        end
    end

    x.compare!
end

Results:

Ruby 2.3.1 at 2016-11-15 15:03:57 +1300

Warming up --------------------------------------
           String#<<   230.615k i/100ms
  String interpolate   234.274k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
           String#<<      2.345M (± 7.2%) i/s -     11.761M in   5.041164s
  String interpolate      1.242M (± 5.4%) i/s -      6.325M in   5.108324s

Comparison:
           String#<<:  2344530.4 i/s
  String interpolate:  1241784.9 i/s - 1.89x  slower

At a guess, I'd say that interpolation generates a temporary string which is why it's slower.