Files
json/docs
Niels Lohmann 91a7a94cc6 Write doubles with the shortest digits (Żmij), digits in registers (#5634)
* Write doubles with the shortest digits (Żmij), digits in registers

Write doubles with the conversion of Zmij by Victor Zverovich (MIT),
ported to C++11 (detail/conversions/zmij.hpp). It finds the
shortest decimal that reads back as the same double, and the
closest one if there are several. Grisu2, used until now, is fast
but not always shortest: it sometimes writes a 17th digit where 16
suffice, or a last digit that is not the closest. The layout is
unchanged (1.5, 100.0, 1e+100, -0.0); float keeps Grisu2.

Digits are converted eight at a time with the BCD conversion of
Xiang JunBo, as in Zmij, and written with one byte swap per eight
digits and fixed-size moves instead of per-digit loops. Leading and
trailing zeros are counted from those bytes. to_chars() uses a
local buffer when the caller's is shorter than the 41 bytes this
may write. The powers of ten come from the number-parsing table,
adjusted where it holds values rounded up, and extended with Zmij's
compressed tables beyond 10^308.

write_shortest() converts its 16 digits in one vector register
(SSE2 on x86-64, NEON on 64-bit Arm, both baseline) and inserts the
decimal point inside the register, avoiding a store-forwarding
stall that cost about 25% of the time to write a double. dump()
writes floats and integers straight into the serializer's write
buffer instead of copying them from a member buffer, and small
integers eight digits at a time. read_eight_bytes() and
parse_eight_digits() are marked always-inline, which GCC had been
calling out of line in the number-parsing loops.

Of one million random doubles, about 0.14% are now written with
different digits, always to a value that still reads back as the
same double.

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

* Fix CI findings in the Zmij writer and its tests

- bit_ops.hpp: include macro_scope.hpp (JSON_HEDLEY_ALWAYS_INLINE); fixes IWYU
- to_chars.hpp: C4100 for the unused parameter in release builds, clang-tidy
  sign comparison, cpplint runtime/int, GCC -Wstrict-overflow (unsigned abs)
- unit-to_chars.cpp: parse with the library instead of strtod (MinGW's strtod
  rounds some 16/17 digit inputs wrongly); no floating-point std::to_chars
  with icpc

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

* Select the Zmij conversion by a trait, not by the double overload

The non-template overloads for double asserted binary64 doubles wherever json.hpp was included, so the library no longer compiled where double is not IEEE 754 binary64 (AVR, -fshort-double). A trait now picks Zmij for any binary64 type, including a long double of that format (MSVC, Apple Arm), and Grisu2 for the others. Remove the unused write_short_decimal, powers_of_ten_16, zmij::decimal, zmij::to_decimal, and shortest_digits(double).

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

* Credit Zmij's authors in to_chars.hpp, the README, and the license page

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

* Silence MSVC C4127 for a platform-constant check in the to_chars test

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

* Regenerate the amalgamated headers

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

---------

Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>
2026-10-14 17:38:37 +02:00
..
2025-04-11 10:41:14 +02:00
2025-04-11 10:41:14 +02:00
2026-10-11 08:21:51 +02:00

Documentation

Generate documentation

Note on documentation: The source files contain links to the online documentation at https://json.nlohmann.me.
This URL provides the most recent documentation and also applies to previous versions. Documentation for deprecated functions is not removed; instead, it is marked as deprecated.

If you want to view the documentation for a specific tag or commit hash, you can generate it locally as follows (example using tag v3.12.0):

git clone https://github.com/nlohmann/json.git
cd json
git checkout v3.12.0
make install_venv serve -C docs/mkdocs

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser. Replace any URL in the source code that points to https://json.nlohmann.me with http://127.0.0.1:8000 to view the documentation for the selected tag or commit hash.