# 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:
```sh
cargo +nightly add muhex
```
Then, you can use it as expected, and the interface is meant to mirror the one on the [`hex`](https://docs.rs/hex) crate, like encoding:
```rust
println!("{}", muhex::encode("Hello world!")); // Prints "48656c6c6f20776f726c6421"
```
And decoding:
```rust
println!("{}", muhex::decode("48656c6c6f20776f726c6421")?); // Prints "Hello world!"
```
If you already own a buffer, you can decode without any allocation:
```rust
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`](https://crates.io/crates/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
| Encode | hex | 2.8246 ms | 354.03 MiB/s | 1x |
| Encode | muhex | 31.313 µs | 31.188 GiB/s | ~90x |
| Encode | faster-hex | 45.955 µs | 21.250 GiB/s | ~61x |
| Decode | hex | 5.1361 ms | 194.70 MiB/s | 1x |
| Decode | muhex | 49.938 µs | 19.556 GiB/s | ~103x |
| Decode | faster-hex | 109.85 µs | 8.8901 GiB/s | ~47x |
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.