Oddly the author finally comes up with

    import string
    def f6(list):
        return string.joinfields(map(chr, list), "")

and never the obvious and shorter use of "".join()

    def f8(list):
       return "".join(map(chr, list))

which beats all but the array module in my benchmarks.

Previously: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1859417