C++ most efficient way to convert string to int (faster than atoi)

Question

As mentioned in the title, I\'m looking for something that can give me more performance than atoi. Presently, the fastest way I know is

atoi(mystring.c_str(         


        

Answer 1

Here is mine. Atoi is the fastest I could come up with. I compiled with msvc 2010 so it might be possible to combine both templates. In msvc 2010, when I combined templates it made the case where you provide a cb argument slower.

Atoi handles nearly all the special atoi cases, and is as fast or faster than this:

int val = 0;
while( *str ) 
    val = val*10 + (*str++ - '0');

Here is the code:

#define EQ1(a,a1) (BYTE(a) == BYTE(a1))
#define EQ1(a,a1,a2) (BYTE(a) == BYTE(a1) && EQ1(a,a2))
#define EQ1(a,a1,a2,a3) (BYTE(a) == BYTE(a1) && EQ1(a,a2,a3))

// Atoi is 4x faster than atoi.  There is also an overload that takes a cb argument.
template  
T Atoi(LPCSTR sz) {
    T n = 0;
    bool fNeg = false;  // for unsigned T, this is removed by optimizer
    const BYTE* p = (const BYTE*)sz;
    BYTE ch;
    // test for most exceptions in the leading chars.  Most of the time
    // this test is skipped.  Note we skip over leading zeros to avoid the 
    // useless math in the second loop.  We expect leading 0 to be the most 
    // likely case, so we test it first, however the cpu might reorder that.
    for ( ; (ch=*p-'1') >= 9 ; ++p) { // unsigned trick for range compare
      // ignore leading 0's, spaces, and '+'
      if (EQ1(ch, '0'-'1', ' '-'1', '+'-'1'))
        continue;
      // for unsigned T this is removed by optimizer
      if (!((T)-1 > 0) && ch==BYTE('-'-'1')) {
        fNeg = !fNeg;
        continue;
      }
      // atoi ignores these.  Remove this code for a small perf increase.
      if (BYTE(*p-9) > 4)  // \t, \n, 11, 12, \r. unsigned trick for range compare
        break;
    }
    // deal with rest of digits, stop loop on non digit.
    for ( ; (ch=*p-'0') <= 9 ; ++p) // unsigned trick for range compare
      n = n*10 + ch; 
    // for unsigned T, (fNeg) test is removed by optimizer
    return (fNeg) ? -n : n;
}

// you could go with a single template that took a cb argument, but I could not
// get the optimizer to create good code when both the cb and !cb case were combined.
// above code contains the comments.
template 
T Atoi(LPCSTR sz, BYTE cb) {
    T n = 0;
    bool fNeg = false; 
    const BYTE* p = (const BYTE*)sz;
    const BYTE* p1 = p + cb;
    BYTE ch;
    for ( ; p= 9 ; ++p) {
      if (EQ1(ch,BYTE('0'-'1'),BYTE(' '-'1'),BYTE('+'-'1')))
        continue;
      if (!((T)-1 > 0) && ch == BYTE('-'-'1')) {
        fNeg = !fNeg;
        continue;
      }
      if (BYTE(*p-9) > 4)  // \t, \n, 11, 12, \r
        break;
    }
    for ( ; p