# Accumulating strings dynamically
**URL:** https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209
**Category:** General Usage
**Created:** [December 3, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209 "2020-12-03T16:42:04Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@purplishrock](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/purplishrock)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2020, 4:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209/1 "2020-12-03T16:42:04Z")
I have to dynamically accumulate strings and for each string simply accumulate characters in an array
```julia
push!(word, c)
```
and then using this nifty one-liner to convert to a string
```julia
foldl(*, word)
```
I’m just wondering if that’s the best way to solve the problem ?
---
### Author:  [@yha](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/yha)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2020, 4:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209/2 "2020-12-03T16:46:14Z")
```julia
julia> word = ['a','b','c'];
julia> join(word)
"abc"
```
---
### Author:  [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2020, 4:46pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209/3 "2020-12-03T16:46:43Z")
No, write to a buffer: create `buf = IOBuffer()`, accumulate characters as `print(buf, c)`, and then do `String(take!(buf))` at the end.
---
### Author:  [@rdeits](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/rdeits)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2020, 4:48pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209/4 "2020-12-03T16:48:54Z")
> [@stevengj](#):
>
> No, write to a buffer: create `buf = IOBuffer()` , write characters as `print(buf, c)` , and then do `String(take!(buf))` at the end.
To be clear, this is exactly what `join` does internally, right? And the advantage of this over using `join` is just that you also skip the unnecessary collection into a `Vector{Char}` ?
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### Author:  [@stevengj](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/stevengj)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2020, 5:24pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209/5 "2020-12-03T17:24:46Z")
> [@rdeits](#):
>
> And the advantage of this over using `join` is just that you also skip the unnecessary collection into a `Vector{Char}` ?
Yes.
---
### Author:  [@purplishrock](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/purplishrock)
#### Post date: [December 3, 2020, 5:34pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/accumulating-strings-dynamically/51209/6 "2020-12-03T17:34:34Z")
@stevengj is the winner ! 🙂
@yha comes in second place
and I came in last ☹
The foldl method is slowest because it does the most allocations. What’s particularly interesting is that the IOBuffer method uses about 1/3 the allocations of using join. And join uses about 1/2 the allocations of foldl.
Thanks everyone