Oddly the author <i>finally</i> comes up with<p><pre><code> import string
def f6(list):
return string.joinfields(map(chr, list), "")
</code></pre>
and never the obvious and shorter use of "".join()<p><pre><code> def f8(list):
return "".join(map(chr, list))
</code></pre>
which beats all but the array module in my benchmarks.