Binaryworld - Faster string appending with Mid$ command ... [ VB -> String ]

As you probably know, the "&" operator is rather slow, especially with long strings. When you have to repeatedly append chucks of characters to the same variable, you can speed up your code using a simple trick based on the Mid$ command. The idea is that you pre-allocate a buffer long enough to accomodate for the result of your operation. Here's an example of this technique.

Suppose you want to create a string given by appending the first 10000 integers, e.g. "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 9999 10000". This is the easiest way to do so:

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res = ""
For i = 1 to 10000: res = res & Str(i): Next

The problem with the standard approach is that the res variable is reallocated 10000 times. This is a better way to reach the same result:

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Dim res As String
Dim i As Long
Dim index As Long

' prepare a buffer long enough
res = Space(90000)
' this points to where we want to insert the string
index = 1

' here we go
For i = 1 to 10000
  substr = Str(i)
  length = Len(substr)
  ' stuff the string inside the result variable
  Mid$(res, index, length) = substr
  ' advance index
  index = index + length
Next
' drop extra chars
res = Left$(res, index - 1)

The standard code takes 2.2 seconds on my 333 MHz system computer, while the smart way takes only 0.08 seconds, so it's 25+ times faster.