Re:How fast can a BufferedReader read lines in Java?
by zlynx on Saturday July 27, 2019 @06:01PM
(#20544488)
I haven't looked recently but several years ago I was shocked to discover the GNU libstdc++ didn't use strchr or memchr. It used a hand-coded for loop because it was a template for various kinds of character. There was no specialization for 8-bit char, either.
As a result std::string was disgustingly slow compared to C code.
- at least one heap allocation for every line. After it finds the EOL it first uses 'new String' followed by '.toString()
- the C++ version will almost certainly be backing on to memchr() behind the scenes, which will be using SIMD instructions where it makes sense (e.g. large enough scan size, probably true in this case). the Java version is a manual bytewise-coded loop.
- the C++ version is reusing its output buffer, no reallocations assuming the same string length or less
No idea about encodings in Java, maybe that is playing a role too