muhex

[!WARNING] muhex requires a nightly version of the Rust compiler.

Muhex provides encoding and decoding in a hexadecimal representation, focusing on speed. It has zero dependencies (one optional, serde), compiles instantly and is faster.

Usage

Install the crate using the normal incantations:

cargo +nightly add muhex

Then, you can use it as expected, and the interface is meant to mirror the one on the hex crate, like encoding:

println!("{}", muhex::encode("Hello world!")); // Prints "48656c6c6f20776f726c6421"

And decoding:

println!("{}", muhex::decode("48656c6c6f20776f726c6421")?); // Prints "Hello world!"

If you already own a buffer, you can decode without any allocation:

let mut buf = vec![0u8; 12];
muhex::decode_to_slice("48656c6c6f20776f726c6421", &mut buf)?;

Benchmarks

This is a benchmark on my own machine against the hex and faster-hex crates.

• Command: RUSTFLAGS="-C target-cpu=native -C target-feature=+avx2,+avx,+sse2" cargo bench --all-features
• Machine: Ryzen 7950X3D 128GB DDR5 RAM

Please note that we can only achieve this performance because we only work on nightly Rust and explicitly enforce SIMD. This is not a statement about the quality or performance of the competing crates—most applications may not benefit from any of these changes.