C++ performance challenge: integer to std::string conversion
Can anyone beat the performance of my integer to std::string code, linked below?
There are already several questions that explain how to convert an integer into a std::string in C++, such as this one, but none of the solutions provided are efficient.
Here is compile-ready code for some common methods to compete against:
- The "C++ way", using stringstream: http://ideone.com/jh3Sa
- sprintf, which SO-ers usually recommend to the performance conscious: http://ideone.com/82kwR
Contrary to popular belief, boost::lexical_cast has its own implementation (white paper) and does not use stringstream and numeric insertion operators. I'd really like to see its performance compared, because this other question suggests that it's miserable.
And my own contribution, which is competitive on desktop computers, and demonstrates an approach that runs at full speed on embedded systems as well, unlike algorithms dependent on integer modulo:
- Ben's algorithms: http://ideone.com/SsEUW
If you want to use that code, I'll make it available under a simplified BSD license (commercial use allowed, attribution required). Just ask.
Finally, the function ltoa is non-standard but widely available.
- ltoa version, for anyone who has a compiler that provides it (ideone doesn't): http://ideone.com/T5Wim
I'll post my performance measurements as an answer shortly.
Rules for algorithms
- Provide code for a conversion of at least 32-bit signed and unsigned integers into decimal.
- Produce output as a
std::string. - No tricks that are incompatible with threading and signals (for example, static buffers).
- You may assume an ASCII character set.
- Make sure to test your code on
INT_MINon a two's complement machine where the absolute value is not representable. - Ideally, the output should be character-for-character identical with the canonical C++ version using
stringstream, http://ideone.com/jh3Sa, but anything that is clearly understandable as the correct number is ok, too. - NEW: Although you can use whatever compiler and optimizer options (except completely disabled) you want for the comparison, the code needs to also compile and give correct results under at least VC++ 2010 and g++.
Hoped-for Discussion
Besides better algorithms, I'd also like to get some benchmarks on several different platforms and compilers (let's use MB/s throughput as our standard unit of measure). I believe that the code for my algorithm (I know the sprintf benchmark takes some shortcuts -- now fixed) is well-defined behavior by the standard, at least under the ASCII assumption, but if you see any undefined behavior or inputs for which the output is invalid, please point that out.
Conclusions:
Different algorithms perform for g++ and VC2010, likely due to the different implementations of std::string on each. VC2010 clearly does a better job with NRVO, getting rid of return-by-value helped only on gcc.
Code was found that outperforms sprintf by an order of magnitude. ostringstream falls behind by a factor of 50 and more.
The winner of the challenge is user434507 who produces code that runs 350% of the speed of my own on gcc. Further entries are closed due to the whims of the SO community.
The current (final?) speed champions are:
- For gcc: user434507, at 8 times faster than
sprintf: http://ideone.com/0uhhX - For Visual C++: Timo, at 15 times faster than
sprintf: http://ideone.com/VpKO3
#include <string>
const char digit_pairs[201] = {
"00010203040506070809"
"10111213141516171819"
"20212223242526272829"
"30313233343536373839"
"40414243444546474849"
"50515253545556575859"
"60616263646566676869"
"70717273747576777879"
"80818283848586878889"
"90919293949596979899"
};
std::string& itostr(int n, std::string& s)
{
if(n==0)
{
s="0";
return s;
}
int sign = -(n<0);
unsigned int val = (n^sign)-sign;
int size;
if(val>=10000)
{
if(val>=10000000)
{
if(val>=1000000000)
size=10;
else if(val>=100000000)
size=9;
else
size=8;
}
else
{
if(val>=1000000)
size=7;
else if(val>=100000)
size=6;
else
size=5;
}
}
else
{
if(val>=100)
{
if(val>=1000)
size=4;
else
size=3;
}
else
{
if(val>=10)
size=2;
else
size=1;
}
}
size -= sign;
s.resize(size);
char* c = &s[0];
if(sign)
*c='-';
c += size-1;
while(val>=100)
{
int pos = val % 100;
val /= 100;
*(short*)(c-1)=*(short*)(digit_pairs+2*pos);
c-=2;
}
while(val>0)
{
*c--='0' + (val % 10);
val /= 10;
}
return s;
}
std::string& itostr(unsigned val, std::string& s)
{
if(val==0)
{
s="0";
return s;
}
int size;
if(val>=10000)
{
if(val>=10000000)
{
if(val>=1000000000)
size=10;
else if(val>=100000000)
size=9;
else
size=8;
}
else
{
if(val>=1000000)
size=7;
else if(val>=100000)
size=6;
else
size=5;
}
}
else
{
if(val>=100)
{
if(val>=1000)
size=4;
else
size=3;
}
else
{
if(val>=10)
size=2;
else
size=1;
}
}
s.resize(size);
char* c = &s[size-1];
while(val>=100)
{
int pos = val % 100;
val /= 100;
*(short*)(c-1)=*(short*)(digit_pairs+2*pos);
c-=2;
}
while(val>0)
{
*c--='0' + (val % 10);
val /= 10;
}
return s;
}
This will blow up on systems that disallow unaligned memory accesses (in which case, the first unaligned assignment via *(short*) would cause a segfault), but should work very nicely otherwise.
One important thing to do is to minimize the use of std::string. (Ironic, I know.) In Visual Studio, for example, most calls to methods of std::string are not inlined, even if you specify /Ob2 in compiler options. So even something as trivial as a call to std::string::clear(), which you might expect to be very fast, can take 100 clockticks when linking CRT as a static library, and as much as 300 clockticks when linking as a DLL.
For the same reason, returning by reference is better because it avoids an assignment, a constructor and a destructor.
Ah, awesome challenge by the way... I've had a lot of fun with this.
I have two algorithms to submit (code is at the bottom if you feel like skipping to it). In my comparisons I require that the function return a string and that it can handle int and unsigned int. Comparing things that don't construct a string to those that do doesn't really make sense.
The first one is a fun implementation that doesn't use any precomputed lookup tables or explicit division/modulo. This one is competitive with the others with gcc and with all but Timo's on msvc (for a good reason that I explain below). The second algorithm is my actual submission for highest performance. In my tests it beats all the others on both gcc and msvc.
I think I know why some of the results on MSVC are very good. std::string has two relevant constructors
std::string(char* str, size_t n)
and std::string(ForwardIterator b, ForwardIterator e)
gcc does the same thing for both of them... that is it uses the second to implement the first. The first constructor can be implemented significantly more efficiently than that and MSVC does so. The side benefit of this is that in some cases (like my fast code and Timo's code) the string constructor can be inlined. In fact, just switching between these constructors in MSVC is almost a 2x difference for my code.
My performance testing results:
Code Sources:
- Voigt
- Timo
- ergosys
- user434507
- user-voigt-timo
- hopman-fun
- hopman-fast
gcc 4.4.5 -O2 on Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit, Core i5
hopman_fun: 124.688 MB/sec --- 8.020 s hopman_fast: 137.552 MB/sec --- 7.270 s voigt: 120.192 MB/sec --- 8.320 s user_voigt_timo: 97.9432 MB/sec --- 10.210 s timo: 120.482 MB/sec --- 8.300 s user: 97.7517 MB/sec --- 10.230 s ergosys: 101.42 MB/sec --- 9.860 s
MSVC 2010 64-bit /Ox on Windows 7 64-bit, Core i5
hopman_fun: 127 MB/sec --- 7.874 s hopman_fast: 259 MB/sec --- 3.861 s voigt: 221.435 MB/sec --- 4.516 s user_voigt_timo: 195.695 MB/sec --- 5.110 s timo: 253.165 MB/sec --- 3.950 s user: 212.63 MB/sec --- 4.703 s ergosys: 78.0518 MB/sec --- 12.812 s
Here are some results and a testing/timing framework on ideone
http://ideone.com/XZRqp
Note that ideone is a 32-bit environment. Both of my algorithms suffer from that, but hopman_fast is at least still competetive.
Note that for those the two or so that don't construct a string I added the following function template:
template <typename T>
std::string itostr(T t) {
std::string ret;
itostr(t, ret);
return ret;
}
Now for my code...first the fun one:
// hopman_fun
template <typename T>
T reduce2(T v) {
T k = ((v * 410) >> 12) & 0x000F000F000F000Full;
return (((v - k * 10) << 8) + k);
}
template <typename T>
T reduce4(T v) {
T k = ((v * 10486) >> 20) & 0xFF000000FFull;
return reduce2(((v - k * 100) << 16) + (k));
}
typedef unsigned long long ull;
inline ull reduce8(ull v) {
ull k = ((v * 3518437209u) >> 45);
return reduce4(((v - k * 10000) << 32) + (k));
}
template <typename T>
std::string itostr(T o) {
union {
char str[16];
unsigned short u2[8];
unsigned u4[4];
unsigned long long u8[2];
};
unsigned v = o < 0 ? ~o + 1 : o;
u8[0] = (ull(v) * 3518437209u) >> 45;
u8[0] = (u8[0] * 28147497672ull);
u8[1] = v - u2[3] * 100000000;
u8[1] = reduce8(u8[1]);
char* f;
if (u2[3]) {
u2[3] = reduce2(u2[3]);
f = str + 6;
} else {
unsigned short* k = u4[2] ? u2 + 4 : u2 + 6;
f = *k ? (char*)k : (char*)(k + 1);
}
if (!*f) f++;
u4[1] |= 0x30303030;
u4[2] |= 0x30303030;
u4[3] |= 0x30303030;
if (o < 0) *--f = '-';
return std::string(f, (str + 16) - f);
}
And then the fast one:
// hopman_fast
struct itostr_helper {
static unsigned out[10000];
itostr_helper() {
for (int i = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
unsigned v = i;
char * o = (char*)(out + i);
o[3] = v % 10 + '0';
o[2] = (v % 100) / 10 + '0';
o[1] = (v % 1000) / 100 + '0';
o[0] = (v % 10000) / 1000;
if (o[0]) o[0] |= 0x30;
else if (o[1] != '0') o[0] |= 0x20;
else if (o[2] != '0') o[0] |= 0x10;
else o[0] |= 0x00;
}
}
};
unsigned itostr_helper::out[10000];
itostr_helper hlp_init;
template <typename T>
std::string itostr(T o) {
typedef itostr_helper hlp;
unsigned blocks[3], *b = blocks + 2;
blocks[0] = o < 0 ? ~o + 1 : o;
blocks[2] = blocks[0] % 10000; blocks[0] /= 10000;
blocks[2] = hlp::out[blocks[2]];
if (blocks[0]) {
blocks[1] = blocks[0] % 10000; blocks[0] /= 10000;
blocks[1] = hlp::out[blocks[1]];
blocks[2] |= 0x30303030;
b--;
}
if (blocks[0]) {
blocks[0] = hlp::out[blocks[0] % 10000];
blocks[1] |= 0x30303030;
b--;
}
char* f = ((char*)b);
f += 3 - (*f >> 4);
char* str = (char*)blocks;
if (o < 0) *--f = '-';
return std::string(f, (str + 12) - f);
}