284 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
284 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
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Unicode ident
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=============
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[<img alt="github" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/github-dtolnay/unicode--ident-8da0cb?style=for-the-badge&labelColor=555555&logo=github" height="20">](https://github.com/dtolnay/unicode-ident)
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[<img alt="crates.io" src="https://img.shields.io/crates/v/unicode-ident.svg?style=for-the-badge&color=fc8d62&logo=rust" height="20">](https://crates.io/crates/unicode-ident)
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[<img alt="docs.rs" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/docs.rs-unicode--ident-66c2a5?style=for-the-badge&labelColor=555555&logo=docs.rs" height="20">](https://docs.rs/unicode-ident)
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[<img alt="build status" src="https://img.shields.io/github/workflow/status/dtolnay/unicode-ident/CI/master?style=for-the-badge" height="20">](https://github.com/dtolnay/unicode-ident/actions?query=branch%3Amaster)
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Implementation of [Unicode Standard Annex #31][tr31] for determining which
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`char` values are valid in programming language identifiers.
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[tr31]: https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr31/
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This crate is a better optimized implementation of the older `unicode-xid`
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crate. This crate uses less static storage, and is able to classify both ASCII
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and non-ASCII codepoints with better performance, 2–10× faster than
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`unicode-xid`.
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<br>
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## Comparison of performance
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The following table shows a comparison between five Unicode identifier
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implementations.
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- `unicode-ident` is this crate;
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- [`unicode-xid`] is a widely used crate run by the "unicode-rs" org;
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- `ucd-trie` and `fst` are two data structures supported by the [`ucd-generate`] tool;
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- [`roaring`] is a Rust implementation of Roaring bitmap.
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The *static storage* column shows the total size of `static` tables that the
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crate bakes into your binary, measured in 1000s of bytes.
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The remaining columns show the **cost per call** to evaluate whether a single
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`char` has the XID\_Start or XID\_Continue Unicode property, comparing across
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different ratios of ASCII to non-ASCII codepoints in the input data.
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[`unicode-xid`]: https://github.com/unicode-rs/unicode-xid
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[`ucd-generate`]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ucd-generate
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[`roaring`]: https://github.com/RoaringBitmap/roaring-rs
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| | static storage | 0% nonascii | 1% | 10% | 100% nonascii |
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|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| **`unicode-ident`** | 10.0 K | 0.96 ns | 0.95 ns | 1.09 ns | 1.55 ns |
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| **`unicode-xid`** | 11.5 K | 1.88 ns | 2.14 ns | 3.48 ns | 15.63 ns |
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| **`ucd-trie`** | 10.2 K | 1.29 ns | 1.28 ns | 1.36 ns | 2.15 ns |
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| **`fst`** | 138 K | 55.1 ns | 54.9 ns | 53.2 ns | 28.5 ns |
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| **`roaring`** | 66.1 K | 2.78 ns | 3.09 ns | 3.37 ns | 4.70 ns |
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Source code for the benchmark is provided in the *bench* directory of this repo
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and may be repeated by running `cargo criterion`.
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<br>
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## Comparison of data structures
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#### unicode-xid
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They use a sorted array of character ranges, and do a binary search to look up
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whether a given character lands inside one of those ranges.
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```rust
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static XID_Continue_table: [(char, char); 763] = [
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('\u{30}', '\u{39}'), // 0-9
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('\u{41}', '\u{5a}'), // A-Z
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…
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('\u{e0100}', '\u{e01ef}'),
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];
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```
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The static storage used by this data structure scales with the number of
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contiguous ranges of identifier codepoints in Unicode. Every table entry
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consumes 8 bytes, because it consists of a pair of 32-bit `char` values.
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In some ranges of the Unicode codepoint space, this is quite a sparse
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representation – there are some ranges where tens of thousands of adjacent
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codepoints are all valid identifier characters. In other places, the
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representation is quite inefficient. A characater like `µ` (U+00B5) which is
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surrounded by non-identifier codepoints consumes 64 bits in the table, while it
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would be just 1 bit in a dense bitmap.
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On a system with 64-byte cache lines, binary searching the table touches 7 cache
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lines on average. Each cache line fits only 8 table entries. Additionally, the
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branching performed during the binary search is probably mostly unpredictable to
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the branch predictor.
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Overall, the crate ends up being about 10× slower on non-ASCII input
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compared to the fastest crate.
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A potential improvement would be to pack the table entries more compactly.
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Rust's `char` type is a 21-bit integer padded to 32 bits, which means every
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table entry is holding 22 bits of wasted space, adding up to 3.9 K. They could
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instead fit every table entry into 6 bytes, leaving out some of the padding, for
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a 25% improvement in space used. With some cleverness it may be possible to fit
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in 5 bytes or even 4 bytes by storing a low char and an extent, instead of low
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char and high char. I don't expect that performance would improve much but this
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could be the most efficient for space across all the libraries, needing only
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about 7 K to store.
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#### ucd-trie
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Their data structure is a compressed trie set specifically tailored for Unicode
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codepoints. The design is credited to Raph Levien in [rust-lang/rust#33098].
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[rust-lang/rust#33098]: https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/33098
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```rust
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pub struct TrieSet {
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tree1_level1: &'static [u64; 32],
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tree2_level1: &'static [u8; 992],
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tree2_level2: &'static [u64],
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tree3_level1: &'static [u8; 256],
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tree3_level2: &'static [u8],
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tree3_level3: &'static [u64],
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}
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```
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It represents codepoint sets using a trie to achieve prefix compression. The
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final states of the trie are embedded in leaves or "chunks", where each chunk is
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a 64-bit integer. Each bit position of the integer corresponds to whether a
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particular codepoint is in the set or not. These chunks are not just a compact
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representation of the final states of the trie, but are also a form of suffix
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compression. In particular, if multiple ranges of 64 contiguous codepoints have
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the same Unicode properties, then they all map to the same chunk in the final
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level of the trie.
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Being tailored for Unicode codepoints, this trie is partitioned into three
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disjoint sets: tree1, tree2, tree3. The first set corresponds to codepoints \[0,
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0x800), the second \[0x800, 0x10000) and the third \[0x10000, 0x110000). These
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partitions conveniently correspond to the space of 1 or 2 byte UTF-8 encoded
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codepoints, 3 byte UTF-8 encoded codepoints and 4 byte UTF-8 encoded codepoints,
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respectively.
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Lookups in this data structure are significantly more efficient than binary
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search. A lookup touches either 1, 2, or 3 cache lines based on which of the
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trie partitions is being accessed.
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One possible performance improvement would be for this crate to expose a way to
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query based on a UTF-8 encoded string, returning the Unicode property
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corresponding to the first character in the string. Without such an API, the
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caller is required to tokenize their UTF-8 encoded input data into `char`, hand
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the `char` into `ucd-trie`, only for `ucd-trie` to undo that work by converting
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back into the variable-length representation for trie traversal.
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#### fst
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Uses a [finite state transducer][fst]. This representation is built into
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[ucd-generate] but I am not aware of any advantage over the `ucd-trie`
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representation. In particular `ucd-trie` is optimized for storing Unicode
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properties while `fst` is not.
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[fst]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/fst
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[ucd-generate]: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ucd-generate
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As far as I can tell, the main thing that causes `fst` to have large size and
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slow lookups for this use case relative to `ucd-trie` is that it does not
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specialize for the fact that only 21 of the 32 bits in a `char` are meaningful.
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There are some dense arrays in the structure with large ranges that could never
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possibly be used.
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#### roaring
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This crate is a pure-Rust implementation of [Roaring Bitmap], a data structure
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designed for storing sets of 32-bit unsigned integers.
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[Roaring Bitmap]: https://roaringbitmap.org/about/
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Roaring bitmaps are compressed bitmaps which tend to outperform conventional
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compressed bitmaps such as WAH, EWAH or Concise. In some instances, they can be
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hundreds of times faster and they often offer significantly better compression.
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In this use case the performance was reasonably competitive but still
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substantially slower than the Unicode-optimized crates. Meanwhile the
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compression was significantly worse, requiring 6× as much storage for the
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data structure.
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I also benchmarked the [`croaring`] crate which is an FFI wrapper around the C
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reference implementation of Roaring Bitmap. This crate was consistently about
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15% slower than pure-Rust `roaring`, which could just be FFI overhead. I did not
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investigate further.
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[`croaring`]: https://crates.io/crates/croaring
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#### unicode-ident
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This crate is most similar to the `ucd-trie` library, in that it's based on
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bitmaps stored in the leafs of a trie representation, achieving both prefix
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compression and suffix compression.
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The key differences are:
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- Uses a single 2-level trie, rather than 3 disjoint partitions of different
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depth each.
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- Uses significantly larger chunks: 512 bits rather than 64 bits.
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- Compresses the XID\_Start and XID\_Continue properties together
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simultaneously, rather than duplicating identical trie leaf chunks across the
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two.
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The following diagram show the XID\_Start and XID\_Continue Unicode boolean
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properties in uncompressed form, in row-major order:
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<table>
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<tr><th>XID_Start</th><th>XID_Continue</th></tr>
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<tr>
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<td><img alt="XID_Start bitmap" width="256" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1940490/168647353-c6eeb922-afec-49b2-9ef5-c03e9d1e0760.png"></td>
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<td><img alt="XID_Continue bitmap" width="256" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/1940490/168647367-f447cca7-2362-4d7d-8cd7-d21c011d329b.png"></td>
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</tr>
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</table>
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Uncompressed, these would take 140 K to store, which is beyond what would be
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reasonable. However, as you can see there is a large degree of similarity
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between the two bitmaps and across the rows, which lends well to compression.
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This crate stores one 512-bit "row" of the above bitmaps in the leaf level of a
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trie, and a single additional level to index into the leafs. It turns out there
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are 124 unique 512-bit chunks across the two bitmaps so 7 bits are sufficient to
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index them.
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The chunk size of 512 bits is selected as the size that minimizes the total size
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of the data structure. A smaller chunk, like 256 or 128 bits, would achieve
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better deduplication but require a larger index. A larger chunk would increase
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redundancy in the leaf bitmaps. 512 bit chunks are the optimum for total size of
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the index plus leaf bitmaps.
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In fact since there are only 124 unique chunks, we can use an 8-bit index with a
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spare bit to index at the half-chunk level. This achieves an additional 8.5%
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compression by eliminating redundancies between the second half of any chunk and
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the first half of any other chunk. Note that this is not the same as using
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chunks which are half the size, because it does not necessitate raising the size
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of the trie's first level.
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In contrast to binary search or the `ucd-trie` crate, performing lookups in this
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data structure is straight-line code with no need for branching.
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```asm
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is_xid_start:
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mov eax, edi
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shr eax, 9
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lea rcx, [rip + unicode_ident::tables::TRIE_START]
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add rcx, rax
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xor eax, eax
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cmp edi, 201728
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cmovb rax, rcx
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test rax, rax
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lea rcx, [rip + .L__unnamed_1]
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cmovne rcx, rax
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movzx eax, byte ptr [rcx]
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shl rax, 5
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mov ecx, edi
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shr ecx, 3
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and ecx, 63
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add rcx, rax
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lea rax, [rip + unicode_ident::tables::LEAF]
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mov al, byte ptr [rax + rcx]
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and dil, 7
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mov ecx, edi
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shr al, cl
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and al, 1
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ret
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```
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<br>
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## License
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Use of the Unicode Character Database, as this crate does, is governed by the <a
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href="LICENSE-UNICODE">Unicode License Agreement – Data Files and Software
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(2016)</a>.
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All intellectual property within this crate that is **not generated** using the
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Unicode Character Database as input is licensed under either of <a
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href="LICENSE-APACHE">Apache License, Version 2.0</a> or <a
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href="LICENSE-MIT">MIT license</a> at your option.
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The **generated** files incorporate tabular data derived from the Unicode
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Character Database, together with intellectual property from the original source
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code content of the crate. One must comply with the terms of both the Unicode
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License Agreement and either of the Apache license or MIT license when those
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generated files are involved.
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Unless you explicitly state otherwise, any contribution intentionally submitted
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for inclusion in this crate by you, as defined in the Apache-2.0 license, shall
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be licensed as just described, without any additional terms or conditions.
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