Crate arraystring

String based on generic array

Since rust doesn't have constant generics yet typenum is used to allow for generic arrays (U1 to U255)

If you need bigger than U255 open an issue explaining your use-case and we may implement

Can't outgrow initial capacity (defined at compile time), always occupies capacity + 1 bytes of memory

Doesn't allocate memory on the heap and never panics in release (all panic branches are stripped at compile time - except Index/IndexMut traits, since they are supposed to)

Why

Data is generally bounded, you don't want a phone number with 30 characters, nor a username with 100. You probably don't even support it in your database.

Why pay the cost of heap allocations of strings with unlimited capacity if you have limited boundaries?

Stack based strings are generally faster to create, clone and append to than heap based strings (custom allocators and thread-locals may help with heap based ones).

But that becomes less true as you increase the array size, 255 bytes is the maximum we accept (bigger will just wrap) and it's probably already slower than heap based strings of that size (like in std::string::String)

There are other stack based strings out there, they generally can have "unlimited" capacity (heap allocate), but the stack based size is defined by the library implementor, we go through a different route by implementing a string based in a generic array.

Array based strings always occupies the full space in memory, so they may use more memory (in the stack) than dynamic strings.

Features

default: std

• std enabled by default, enables std compatibility - impl Error trait for errors (remove it to be #[no_std] compatible)

• serde-traits enables serde traits integration (Serialize/Deserialize)

  Opperates like String, but truncates it if it's bigger than capacity

• diesel-traits enables diesel traits integration (Insertable/Queryable)

  Opperates like String, but truncates it if it's bigger than capacity

• logs enables internal logging

  You will probably only need this if you are debugging this library

Examples

use arraystring::{Error, ArrayString, typenum::U5, typenum::U20};

type Username = ArrayString<U20>;
type Role = ArrayString<U5>;

#[derive(Debug)]
pub struct User {
    pub username: Username,
    pub role: Role,
}

fn main() -> Result<(), Error> {
    let user = User {
        username: Username::try_from_str("user")?,
        role: Role::try_from_str("admin")?
    };
    println!("{:?}", user);

    Ok(())
}

Benchmarks

This benchmarks ran while I streamed video and used my computer (with non-disclosed specs) as usual, so don't take the actual times too serious, just focus on the comparison

string                     clone                 25.850 ns
string                     from                  25.815 ns
---------------------------------------------------------
small-string  (21 bytes)   clone                  4.556 ns
small-string  (21 bytes)   try_from_str          15.749 ns
small-string  (21 bytes)   from_str_truncate     10.991 ns
small-string  (21 bytes)   from_str_unchecked    11.195 ns
---------------------------------------------------------
cache-string  (63 bytes)   clone                 10.345 ns
cache-string  (63 bytes)   try_from_str          24.959 ns
cache-string  (63 bytes)   from_str_truncate     17.485 ns
cache-string  (63 bytes)   from_str_unchecked    16.684 ns
---------------------------------------------------------
max-string   (255 bytes)   clone                145.750 ns
max-string   (255 bytes)   try_from_str         157.890 ns
max-string   (255 bytes)   from_str_truncate    193.870 ns
max-string   (255 bytes)   from_str_unchecked   163.740 ns

Licenses

MIT and Apache-2.0

Re-exports

pub use typenum;

pub use crate::error::Error;

Modules

drain	Draining iterator for ArrayString
error	Contains all of this crate errors
prelude	Most used traits and data-strucutres

Structs

ArrayString	String based on a generic array (size defined at compile time through typenum)
CacheString	Newtype string that occupies 64 bytes in memory and is 64 bytes aligned (full cache line)

Type Definitions

MaxString	Biggest array based string (255 bytes of string)
SmallString	String with the same mem::size_of of a String in a 64 bits architecture