Performance comparisons using timeit

timeit.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# encoding: utf-8

import random
import string
from array import array
from timeit import Timer

repeats = 3 # report the best of these repeats
executions = 100000

L = [random.choice(string.letters) for i in range(100)]

def timeReduce():
    reduce(lambda x, y: x + y, L, '')

def timeJoin():
    ''.join(L)

def timeArray():
    array('c', L).tostring()

if __name__ == '__main__':
    func_list = [locals()[key] for key in locals().keys() \
                 if callable(locals()[key]) and key.startswith('time')]
    for f in func_list:
        t = Timer(f)
        print "%s:\t%f" % (f.__name__, min(t.repeat(repeats, executions)))