Hit Strings with the Shovel

I wondered what is quicker for concatenating strings in ruby. Is it the scientific looking “plus” + or the “shovel” << ? Turns out the shovel.

a = "Simon"
a.object_id
=> 70246893339820

a = "Simon" + "1"
=> "Simon1"
a.object_id
=> 70246887673100

a = "Simon" << "1"
=> "Simon1"
a.object_id
=> 70246887499720

a << "1"
=> "Simon11"
a.object_id
=> 70246887499720

The shovel doesn’t create new objects, making it much less memory hungry and quicker.