Niels Lohmann fb3dd97306 Route contiguous byte containers through the pointer adapter (fast paths in C++11) ...

json::parse(std::string) - the most common entry point - did not benefit
from the contiguous fast paths (bulk string scanning, UTF-8 bulk
validation, memcpy for binary formats) in C++11..17: std::string::iterator
is a library wrapper, not a raw pointer, and pre-C++20 there is no portable
way to prove it contiguous, so supports_bulk_scan was false. Only raw
pointers, string literals, and C-arrays (and, in C++20, anything modelling
std::contiguous_iterator) took the fast path.

Detect contiguous single-byte containers (std::string, std::vector<char>,
std::vector<std::uint8_t>, std::string_view, ...) via is_contiguous_byte_
container and route them through an iterator_input_adapter built from
data()/data()+size(). The generic iterator-based container overload is
constrained to exclude these, so the two overloads are disjoint and there
is no ambiguity (a plain competing overload loses to the greedy
forwarding-reference container overload on reference binding, and a factory
partial-specialization is ambiguous - both were tried and rejected).

The pointer keeps the container's own element type, so char_type - and
therefore all parsing behavior - is byte-for-byte identical to the iterator
path (const char* for std::string, const std::uint8_t* for
std::vector<std::uint8_t>); only the raw pointer additionally turns on the
fast paths. Lifetimes are unchanged: the container outlives the adapter for
the full parse expression, exactly as the iterators it replaces did.

Measured, C++11, json::parse/accept(std::string), g++ 13:

  long ASCII strings:  accept 201 -> 3200 MB/s  (~16x),  parse 174 -> 1444
  dense CJK:           accept 263 ->  697 MB/s  (~2.6x)
  short strings:       accept 163 ->  243 MB/s  (~1.5x)

Verified: char_type preserved for std::string (char) and
std::vector<std::uint8_t> (uint8_t); CBOR/MsgPack round-trips from
std::vector<std::uint8_t> unchanged; 1,000,000 randomized documents accept
and parse identically via std::string and via std::istream;
deserialization/user-defined-input/parser/lexer/conversions/diagnostic-
position suites pass (20,480 assertions); warning-clean on g++ and clang in
C++11/17/20.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01AXcDtEma2PjxgmPS9cQGzA
Signed-off-by: Niels Lohmann <mail@nlohmann.me>

2026-07-20 09:51:17 +00:00

..

json_fwd.hpp

📄 adjust year (#5044)

2026-01-01 20:00:39 +01:00

json.hpp

Route contiguous byte containers through the pointer adapter (fast paths in C++11)

2026-07-20 09:51:17 +00:00