4 ms·

According to the bible (https://www.agner.org/optimize/ https://www.agner.org/optimize/) it's faster to use a loop with length than walking though a pointer so

According to the bible (https://www.agner.org/optimize/ https://www.agner.org/optimize/) it's faster to use a loop with length than walking though a pointer so not having a length will make it slower to walk the string whole also making things like simd optimizations harder for the compiler to do.

throwawaymaths 3y ago
That doesn't make sense. If you have loop with length you have to check both the content of the byte and the index; if you have null terminated strings you only check the content of the byte.
- GrumpySloth 3y ago
  When you have the length, you can unroll the loop, so that you e.g. do 4 iterations at a time. With NUL you can’t do that. Moreover, loop iteration can be done in parallel (instruction-level parallelism) with processing the content of the string, since there is no data dependency between the two. With NUL you introduce a data dependency.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    You can't always do those things. Yes, pointer length is almost always faster. But it's not always faster. https://lemire.me/blog/2020/09/03/sentinels-can-be-faster/?amp https://lemire.me/blog/2020/09/03/sentinels-can-be-faster/?a...
    - yakubin 3y ago
      You can. Here is my version: <https://godbolt.org/z/91KecEfbM https://godbolt.org/z/91KecEfbM> Results: N = 10000 range 1218.1 sentinel 937.258 mine 672.227 ratio 1.29964 (ratio is range/sentinel, not mine/whatever) You can get even more crazy with SIMD. But for all that you need to know the length beforehand. Edit: The b4 variable should actually be called b8. That's a remnant of a previous version, where I used 32-bit chunks.
      - throwawaymaths 3y ago
        Read the blog post. Dan lemire isn't exactly a slouch.
        GrumpySloth 3y ago
        I read it. I don't see your point. Sentinel values simply give you a very low performance ceiling that you can't optimise past. What I wrote only took me a couple minutes. It's far from optimal (but it already takes 2/3 the time the sentinel version takes, and 1/2 the time Lemire's range version takes). With thorough effort I bet you could get at least 10 times faster than that, provided you are given the length. With sentinels, you're just left with the original performance levels you can't improve.

throwawaymaths 3y ago

That doesn't make sense. If you have loop with length you have to check both the content of the byte and the index; if you have null terminated strings you only check the content of the byte.

GrumpySloth 3y ago
When you have the length, you can unroll the loop, so that you e.g. do 4 iterations at a time. With NUL you can’t do that. Moreover, loop iteration can be done in parallel (instruction-level parallelism) with processing the content of the string, since there is no data dependency between the two. With NUL you introduce a data dependency.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  You can't always do those things. Yes, pointer length is almost always faster. But it's not always faster. https://lemire.me/blog/2020/09/03/sentinels-can-be-faster/?amp https://lemire.me/blog/2020/09/03/sentinels-can-be-faster/?a...
  - yakubin 3y ago
    You can. Here is my version: <https://godbolt.org/z/91KecEfbM https://godbolt.org/z/91KecEfbM> Results: N = 10000 range 1218.1 sentinel 937.258 mine 672.227 ratio 1.29964 (ratio is range/sentinel, not mine/whatever) You can get even more crazy with SIMD. But for all that you need to know the length beforehand. Edit: The b4 variable should actually be called b8. That's a remnant of a previous version, where I used 32-bit chunks.
    - throwawaymaths 3y ago
      Read the blog post. Dan lemire isn't exactly a slouch.
      - GrumpySloth 3y ago
        I read it. I don't see your point. Sentinel values simply give you a very low performance ceiling that you can't optimise past. What I wrote only took me a couple minutes. It's far from optimal (but it already takes 2/3 the time the sentinel version takes, and 1/2 the time Lemire's range version takes). With thorough effort I bet you could get at least 10 times faster than that, provided you are given the length. With sentinels, you're just left with the original performance levels you can't improve.