GNU bug report logs - #20154
25.0.50; json-encode-string is too slow for large strings

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From: Dmitry Gutov <dgutov <at> yandex.ru>
To: Eli Zaretskii <eliz <at> gnu.org>
Cc: 20154 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#20154: 25.0.50; json-encode-string is too slow for large strings
Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2015 00:02:51 +0200

On 03/20/2015 11:14 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> Making the string 10 times longer increases the runtime by ~5 here (0.1
>> -> 0.5). Another 10x increase in length makes it run 4.3 seconds.
>
> So maybe writing this in C is the way to go.

Maybe implementing `json-encode-string` itself in C isn't strictly 
necessary, or even particularly advantageous.

How about trying to optimize `replace-match' or 
`replace-regexp-in-string' (which are the main two approaches we can use 
to implement `json-encode-string') for the case of large input?

Take this example:

(setq s1 (apply #'concat (cl-loop for i from 1 to 30000
                                  collect "123456789\n"))
      s2 (apply #'concat (cl-loop for i from 1 to 15000
                                  collect "1234567890123456789\n")))

On my machine,

(replace-regexp-in-string "\n" "z" s1 t t)

takes ~0.13s, while

(replace-regexp-in-string "\n" "z" s2 t t)

clocks at ~0.08-0.10.

Which is, again, pretty slow by modern standards.

(And I've only now realized that the above function is implemented in 
Lisp; all the more reason to move it to C).

Replacing "z" with #'identity (so now we include a function call 
overhead) increases the averages to 0.15s and 0.10s respectively.

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