Crate bytesbox

ByteBox

ByteBox is a high-performance, memory-efficient hash table implemented in Rust, designed specifically for scenarios where keys and values are naturally represented as byte arrays (Vec<u8>). This crate offers a robust and flexible solution for storing and managing byte-based key-value pairs, making it ideal for applications in networking, data serialization, caching, and more.

Key Features

• Efficient Storage: Utilizes separate chaining with linked lists to handle hash collisions, ensuring quick insertion and retrieval even under high load.
• Dynamic Resizing: Automatically resizes the underlying storage when the load factor exceeds a predefined threshold, maintaining optimal performance and preventing excessive collisions.
• Primitive Type Support: Provides convenient methods to insert primitive types by converting them into their byte representations, simplifying the process of storing numerical and other basic data types.
• Iterative Access: Implements iterator traits, allowing seamless traversal of all key-value pairs within the ByteBox, facilitating operations like searching, filtering, and bulk processing.
• Customizable Hashing: Leverages Rust’s DefaultHasher for hashing keys, ensuring a good distribution of entries across the hash table and minimizing collision rates.
• User-Friendly Display: Offers a formatted and colored visualization of the hash table’s structure, aiding in debugging and providing insights into the distribution of entries.
• Comprehensive Documentation: Comes with detailed documentation for all public interfaces, making it easy for developers to integrate and utilize ByteBox effectively in their projects.

Design and Implementation

ByteBox is built around the concept of storing keys and values as byte vectors, allowing for a wide range of applications where data is naturally in byte form or can be easily converted. The core structure consists of a vector of optional Entry boxes, each representing a key-value pair. By using separate chaining, ByteBox efficiently manages collisions, ensuring that even with a large number of entries, performance remains consistent.

The crate emphasizes simplicity and efficiency, providing a straightforward API for common operations such as insertion, retrieval, and removal of entries. Additionally, the support for primitive types through the BytesPrimitives trait simplifies the process of working with numerical data, reducing the overhead of manual byte conversions.

Use Cases

• Networking: Ideal for managing protocol headers and payloads where data is inherently byte-oriented.
• Data Serialization: Facilitates the storage and retrieval of serialized data structures, enabling efficient caching and quick access.
• Caching Systems: Serves as an effective in-memory cache for applications requiring fast lookup and storage of byte-based data.
• Configuration Management: Allows for the storage of configuration settings and parameters in a compact byte format, enhancing performance and reducing memory footprint.

Performance Considerations

ByteBox is optimized for speed and memory usage, making it suitable for performance-critical applications. Its dynamic resizing mechanism ensures that the hash table maintains a low load factor, minimizing collisions and ensuring that operations remain efficient as the number of entries grows. By leveraging Rust’s ownership and borrowing principles, ByteBox ensures safe and concurrent access patterns without sacrificing performance.

Getting Started

Integrating ByteBox into your Rust project is straightforward. Simply add it as a dependency in your Cargo.toml and start utilizing its powerful API to manage your byte-based key-value pairs with ease and efficiency.

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Safety Considerations

The remove method uses unsafe code to manipulate pointers for efficient removal of entries. Care has been taken to ensure this is safe, but users should be aware of the risks associated with unsafe blocks.

Modules

iterator

primitives

Structs

ByteBox

A hash table implementation that stores key-value pairs as byte vectors. Uses separate chaining to handle hash collisions.