Thanks to all who commented. I'll put together a proposal to rename that initializer tonight, unless someone else wants to do it. This seems like a pretty straightforward clarity gain, and it might even help a bit with compilation times.
Austin On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 10:54 AM, Daniel Dunbar via swift-users < swift-users@swift.org> wrote: > > On May 9, 2016, at 10:28 AM, Jacob Bandes-Storch via swift-users < > swift-users@swift.org> wrote: > > On Mon, May 9, 2016 at 10:25 AM, Joe Groff via swift-users < > swift-users@swift.org> wrote: > >> >> > On May 7, 2016, at 10:39 AM, Austin Zheng via swift-users < >> swift-users@swift.org> wrote: >> > >> > Hello Swift users, >> > >> > I wanted to run something past you folks and get some opinions/feedback. >> > >> > About a month ago on Hacker News I saw someone commenting about how >> Swift's string-handling code was unbearably slow (3 seconds to run a code >> sample, vs. 0.8 in Java). I asked him to provide the code, and he obliged. >> Unfortunately, I didn't have time to dig into it until this morning. The >> code in its entirety can be found here: >> https://gist.github.com/austinzheng/d6c674780a58cb63832c4df3f809e683 >> > >> > At line 26 we have the following code: >> > >> > result.append(begin == eos ? "" : String(cs[begin..<end.successor()])) >> > >> > 'cs' is a UTF16 view into an input string, while 'result' is a >> [String]. When I profiled the code in Instruments, I noticed that it was >> spending significant time within the reflection machinery. >> > >> > It turns out that the initializer to make a String out of a utf16 view >> looks like this, and I believe this is the initializer the author intended >> to call: >> > >> > init?(_: String.UTF16View) >> > >> > However, the actual initializer being called was this String >> initializer in the Mirror code: >> > >> > public init<Subject>(_ instance: Subject) >> > >> > This seems like a tricky gotcha for developers who aren't extremely >> familiar with both the String and reflection APIs. His code looked >> reasonable at a first glance and I didn't suspect anything was wrong until >> I profiled it. Even so, I only made the connection because I recognized the >> name of the standard library function from poking around inside the source >> files. >> > >> > What do other people think? Is this something worth worrying about, or >> is it so rare that it shouldn't matter? Also, any suggestions as to how >> that code sample might be improved would be appreciated - my naive first >> attempt wasn't any better. >> >> This definitely strikes me as a problem. The String<T>(_:) constructor is >> very easy to call by accident if you're trying to hit another unlabeled >> initializer. It also strikes me as not particularly "value-preserving", >> since stringifying many types loses information. Perhaps we should propose >> giving it a label, String(printing:) maybe? >> > > +1 > > > +1 > > - Daniel > > > >> >> -Joe >> _______________________________________________ >> swift-users mailing list >> swift-users@swift.org >> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users >> > > _______________________________________________ > swift-users mailing list > swift-users@swift.org > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users > > > > _______________________________________________ > swift-users mailing list > swift-users@swift.org > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-users > >
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