Speed up whitespace skipping in the lexer (#5490)

* Speed up whitespace skipping in the lexer

lexer::skip_whitespace() called get() for every whitespace byte, and
get() checks the (almost always false, once past the first character)
next_unget flag on every call. skip_whitespace() now reads its first
character with get() (needed to honor a pending unget() left over from
finishing the previous token, e.g. scan_number() always ungets the
character that terminated the number) and every further whitespace
character with a new get_ignoring_pending_unget() variant that skips
that branch, since nothing in the loop calls unget().

This is a narrower fix than the full contiguous-buffer bulk-skip
suggested in the issue (scan a run of whitespace directly in the
adapter's buffer and update position counters once per run). That
approach depends on bulk-scan adapter infrastructure
(supports_bulk_scan/bulk_data()/bulk_skip()) introduced by the open,
unmerged parser-performance PR #5283, which this change intentionally
does not depend on or replicate. Building new bulk-scan adapter
infrastructure from scratch was judged out of scope/riskier than
warranted here, so this change is limited to the safe, always-correct
improvement of removing redundant per-character bookkeeping from the
existing byte-at-a-time loop; full bulk-skipping is left as future
work once #5283 (or equivalent adapter support) lands.

Line/column/byte-offset bookkeeping is untouched and verified
bit-for-bit identical before and after this change, including for
pretty-printed (dump(4)) input with embedded newlines.

Fixes #5412

Stacked on top of the PR for #5411 (branch
issue-5411-lexer-skip-conversion).

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Fix codegen regression in skip_whitespace() from #5490

Benchmarking found the get()/get_ignoring_pending_unget() split in
skip_whitespace() made long whitespace runs (e.g. indentation in
pretty-printed JSON) 1.75x-3.2x SLOWER instead of faster, reproducible
with both Apple Clang and GCC.

Root cause: rewriting the loop from a plain do-while into an initial
get() followed by a while-loop defeated the compiler's ability to keep
the input adapter's read/end pointers in registers across iterations;
both compilers instead reloaded them from memory on every character.
The function split itself was not the problem (it still fully
inlines); the loop's control-flow shape was.

The fix keeps the same two-function structure but restores a
do-while shape (guarded by an if for the "first char not whitespace"
case), which lets both compilers hoist the pointers back into
registers, matching or beating pre-#5490 performance.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Share the position-counter bump between get() and get_ignoring_pending_unget()

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Extract current_is_whitespace() to deduplicate skip_whitespace()'s two whitespace checks

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Use a raw string literal for the multi-line error-position test input

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

* Fix clang-tidy raw-string-literal finding and guard a new test against JSON_NOEXCEPTION

The issue #5412 whitespace-skipping test added a check_error() helper that
relies on catching json::parse_error to verify the exception message; under
JSON_NOEXCEPTION, JSON_THROW aborts instead of throwing, which crashed
ci_test_noexceptions (and cascaded into the other ci_cmake_options jobs).
Guard the whole section with #if !defined(JSON_NOEXCEPTION), matching the
existing pattern used by sibling tests in this file.

Also switch one escaped string literal to a raw string literal to satisfy
clang-tidy's modernize-raw-string-literal check.

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
This commit is contained in:
Niels Lohmann
2026-09-09 09:46:26 +02:00
committed by GitHub
parent faa35cc647
commit 6d86cc0f6b
3 changed files with 199 additions and 8 deletions
+67 -4
View File
@@ -9229,8 +9229,7 @@ scan_number_done:
*/
char_int_type get()
{
++position.chars_read_total;
++position.chars_read_current_line;
advance_position();
if (next_unget)
{
@@ -9242,6 +9241,23 @@ scan_number_done:
current = ia.get_character();
}
return track_after_read();
}
/// shared head of get() / get_ignoring_pending_unget(): bump the
/// per-character position counters (line-count-on-'\n' bookkeeping is
/// handled afterwards, in track_after_read(), once `current` is known)
void advance_position() noexcept
{
++position.chars_read_total;
++position.chars_read_current_line;
}
/// shared tail of get() / get_ignoring_pending_unget(): capture the
/// character for error messages (if needed) and update line/column
/// bookkeeping for the character now in `current`
char_int_type track_after_read()
{
// seekable adapters reconstruct the token lazily on error (see
// get_token_string), so the eager per-character copy is skipped
capture_char(std::integral_constant<bool, lazy_token_string> {});
@@ -9255,6 +9271,29 @@ scan_number_done:
return current;
}
/*!
@brief like get(), but for call sites that can prove no unget() is pending
get() has to check the `next_unget` flag on every call, because a
previous token may have ended with unget() (e.g. scan_number() always
ungets the character that terminated the number, so the next call to
scan() can see it again). skip_whitespace() reads that first,
possibly-ungotten character via a plain get(), but every further
character it reads is guaranteed to be a fresh read: nothing between
those calls invokes unget(). This variant skips the (otherwise always
false) next_unget branch for those calls; it is not a general
replacement for get().
*/
char_int_type get_ignoring_pending_unget()
{
JSON_ASSERT(!next_unget);
advance_position();
current = ia.get_character();
return track_after_read();
}
/// seekable adapter: nothing to capture, the token is rebuilt on error
void capture_char(std::true_type /*lazy*/) const noexcept {}
@@ -9448,13 +9487,37 @@ scan_number_done:
return true;
}
/// whether `current` is one of the four JSON whitespace characters
bool current_is_whitespace() const noexcept
{
return current == ' ' || current == '\t' || current == '\n' || current == '\r';
}
void skip_whitespace()
{
// the first character may be a pending unget() left over from the
// previous token (see get_ignoring_pending_unget()); every
// subsequent character read by this loop is guaranteed fresh, since
// nothing below calls unget()
get();
if (!current_is_whitespace())
{
return;
}
// this is written as an if-guarded do-while (rather than a plain
// while loop) because that shape is what lets both GCC and Clang
// keep the input adapter's read pointer in a register across
// iterations; the equivalent while-loop measurably defeated that
// optimization in testing, turning long whitespace runs (e.g. the
// indentation of pretty-printed JSON) from a register-only loop
// into one that reloads the pointer from memory every character
do
{
get();
get_ignoring_pending_unget();
}
while (current == ' ' || current == '\t' || current == '\n' || current == '\r');
while (current_is_whitespace());
}
token_type scan()