Karl Seguin

I'm dealing with string-based inputs that actually represent integers. The system is under very tight performance constraints - tens of thousands of users on it at the same time with frequent server interaction (i.e., they aren't spending 10 minutes reading a page).

The hubris starts to kick in and I tell myself "I can write this faster!". I open up Reflector to scope out my competition and see that Int32.Parse looks pretty heavy..I mean, just look at ParseNumber.ParseNumber.

The first thing I do is write a simple load tester. It looks something like:

string[] testString = {... 1000 randomly generated string values representing VALID positive integers ...}
DateTime startTime = DateTime.Now;       
for (int j = 0; j < 100; ++j)
{
    for (int i = 0; i < testString.Length; ++i)
    {               
      Int32.Parse(testString[ i ]);
    }
}   
Console.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.Subtract(startTime).TotalMilliseconds);

 
That's 100 000 iterations. It takes....33 milliseconds. Let's be honest, my performance requirements are tight, but not nearly that tight. I can probably tweak 1 index and get 50x the performance boost from it.

But...curiosity has the best of me. So I see what I can do. Here's my first attempt:

internal static int AsciiToInteger(string stringToConvert)
{
   int zeroValue = '0';
   char[] characters = stringToConvert.ToCharArray();        
   int value = 0;
   for (int i = 0; i < characters.Length; ++i)
   {
      char c = characters[ i ];
      if (c < '0' || c > '9')
      {
         throw new FormatException("Input string was not in the correct format");
      }
      value = 10 * value + (c - zeroValue);
   }
   return value;
}

It runs in 11 milliseconds...not bad.  Using unsafe code I manage to cut that down to 5milliseconds:

public unsafe static int MyParse2(string stringToConvert)
{
    int value = 0;       
    int length = stringToConvert.Length;
    fixed(char* characters = stringToConvert)
    {
        for (int i = 0; i < length; ++i)
        {                   
            value = 10 * value + (characters[ i ] - 48);
        }   
    }
    return value;
}

I'll revisit the issue again once I profile the app and see if there's any benefits to the overall system by moving to something other than Int32.Parse, but thought I'd share my experience.

Oh, and incase anyone's wondering, I did write some unit tests for it since I do realize that my version is far less robust:

[Test, ExpectedException(typeof(FormatException))]
public void AtoIDoesntAcceptNegatives()
{
   AsciiToInteger("-32235");
}
[Test, ExpectedException(typeof(FormatException))]
public void AtoIDoesntAcceptNonNumericCharacters()
{
   AsciiToInteger("3d2a35");
}
[Test, ExpectedException(typeof(NullReferenceException))]
public void AtoIThrowsExceptionWhenNull()
{
   AsciiToInteger(null);
}
[Test]
public void AtoIReturnsZeroForEmptyString()
{
   Assert.AreEqual(0, AsciiToInteger(""));
}     
[Test]
public void AtoIReturnsProperInteger()
{        
   Assert.AreEqual(Int32.MaxValue, AsciiToInteger(Int32.MaxValue.ToString()));
   Assert.AreEqual(0, AsciiToInteger("0"));
   Assert.AreEqual(43, AsciiToInteger("43"));
   Assert.AreEqual(54354, AsciiToInteger("054354"));
}