Use appendStringInfoSpaces more

Started by David Rowleyabout 3 years ago5 messageshackers
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#1David Rowley
dgrowleyml@gmail.com

In [1]/messages/by-id/CAApHDvrrFNSm8dF24tmYOZpvo-R5ZP+0FoqVo2XcYhRftehoRQ@mail.gmail.com I noticed a bit of a poor usage of appendStringInfoString which
just appends 4 spaces in a loop, one for each indent level of the
jsonb. It should be better just to use appendStringInfoSpaces and
just append all the spaces in one go rather than appending 4 spaces in
a loop. That'll save having to check enlargeStringInfo() once for each
loop.

I'm aiming this mostly as a cleanup patch, but after looking at the
appendStringInfoSpaces code, I thought it could be done a bit more
efficiently by using memset instead of using the while loop that keeps
track of 2 counters. memset has the option of doing more than a char
at a time, which should be useful for larger numbers of spaces.

It does seem a bit faster when appending 8 chars at least going by the
attached spaces.c file.

With -O1
$ ./spaces
while 0.536577 seconds
memset 0.326532 seconds

However, I'm not really expecting much of a performance increase from
this change. I do at least want to make sure I've not made anything
worse, so I used pgbench to run:

select jsonb_pretty(row_to_json(pg_class)::jsonb) from pg_class;

perf top says:

Master:
0.96% postgres [.] add_indent.part.0

Patched
0.25% postgres [.] add_indent.part.0

I can't really detect a certain enough TPS change over the noise. I
expect it might become more significant with more complex json that
has more than a single indent level.

I could only find 1 other instance where we use appendStringInfoString
to append spaces. I've adjusted that one too.

David

[1]: /messages/by-id/CAApHDvrrFNSm8dF24tmYOZpvo-R5ZP+0FoqVo2XcYhRftehoRQ@mail.gmail.com

Attachments:

use_appendStringInfoSpaces_more.patchtext/plain; charset=US-ASCII; name=use_appendStringInfoSpaces_more.patchDownload+4-7
spaces.ctext/plain; charset=US-ASCII; name=spaces.cDownload
#2Peter Smith
smithpb2250@gmail.com
In reply to: David Rowley (#1)
Re: Use appendStringInfoSpaces more

On Thu, Jan 19, 2023 at 8:45 PM David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com> wrote:

In [1] I noticed a bit of a poor usage of appendStringInfoString which
just appends 4 spaces in a loop, one for each indent level of the
jsonb. It should be better just to use appendStringInfoSpaces and
just append all the spaces in one go rather than appending 4 spaces in
a loop. That'll save having to check enlargeStringInfo() once for each
loop.

Should the add_indent function also have a check to avoid making
unnecessary calls to appendStringInfoSpaces when the level is 0?

e.g.
if (indent)
{
appendStringInfoCharMacro(out, '\n');
if (level > 0)
appendStringInfoSpaces(out, level * 4);
}

V.

if (indent)
{
appendStringInfoCharMacro(out, '\n');
appendStringInfoSpaces(out, level * 4);
}

------
Kind Regards,
Peter Smith.
Fujitsu Australia

#3Tom Lane
tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
In reply to: Peter Smith (#2)
Re: Use appendStringInfoSpaces more

Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> writes:

Should the add_indent function also have a check to avoid making
unnecessary calls to appendStringInfoSpaces when the level is 0?

Seems like unnecessary extra notation, seeing that appendStringInfoSpaces
will fall out quickly for a zero argument.

regards, tom lane

#4David Rowley
dgrowleyml@gmail.com
In reply to: Tom Lane (#3)
Re: Use appendStringInfoSpaces more

On Fri, 20 Jan 2023 at 10:25, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:

Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> writes:

Should the add_indent function also have a check to avoid making
unnecessary calls to appendStringInfoSpaces when the level is 0?

Seems like unnecessary extra notation, seeing that appendStringInfoSpaces
will fall out quickly for a zero argument.

Yeah agreed. As far as I see it, the level will only be 0 before the
first WJB_BEGIN_OBJECT and those appear to be the first thing in the
document, so we'll only indent level 0 once and everything else will
be > 0. So, it also seems to me that the additional check is more
likely to cost more than it would save.

David

#5David Rowley
dgrowleyml@gmail.com
In reply to: Peter Smith (#2)
Re: Use appendStringInfoSpaces more

On Fri, 20 Jan 2023 at 10:23, Peter Smith <smithpb2250@gmail.com> wrote:

Should the add_indent function also have a check to avoid making
unnecessary calls to appendStringInfoSpaces when the level is 0?

Although I didn't opt to do that, thank you for having a look.

I do think the patch is trivially simple and nobody seems against it,
so I've now pushed it.

David