Why is splitting a string slower in C++ than Python?

Question

I\'m trying to convert some code from Python to C++ in an effort to gain a little bit of speed and sharpen my rusty C++ skills. Yesterday I was shocked when a naive impleme

Answer 1

I'm not providing any better solutions (at least performance-wise), but some additional data that could be interesting.

Using strtok_r (reentrant variant of strtok):

void splitc1(vector &tokens, const string &str,
        const string &delimiters = " ") {
    char *saveptr;
    char *cpy, *token;

    cpy = (char*)malloc(str.size() + 1);
    strcpy(cpy, str.c_str());

    for(token = strtok_r(cpy, delimiters.c_str(), &saveptr);
        token != NULL;
        token = strtok_r(NULL, delimiters.c_str(), &saveptr)) {
        tokens.push_back(string(token));
    }

    free(cpy);
}

Additionally using character strings for parameters, and fgets for input:

void splitc2(vector &tokens, const char *str,
        const char *delimiters) {
    char *saveptr;
    char *cpy, *token;

    cpy = (char*)malloc(strlen(str) + 1);
    strcpy(cpy, str);

    for(token = strtok_r(cpy, delimiters, &saveptr);
        token != NULL;
        token = strtok_r(NULL, delimiters, &saveptr)) {
        tokens.push_back(string(token));
    }

    free(cpy);
}

And, in some cases, where destroying the input string is acceptable:

void splitc3(vector &tokens, char *str,
        const char *delimiters) {
    char *saveptr;
    char *token;

    for(token = strtok_r(str, delimiters, &saveptr);
        token != NULL;
        token = strtok_r(NULL, delimiters, &saveptr)) {
        tokens.push_back(string(token));
    }
}

The timings for these are as follows (including my results for the other variants from the question and the accepted answer):

split1.cpp:  C++   : Saw 20000000 lines in 31 seconds.  Crunch speed: 645161
split2.cpp:  C++   : Saw 20000000 lines in 45 seconds.  Crunch speed: 444444
split.py:    Python: Saw 20000000 lines in 33 seconds.  Crunch Speed: 606060
split5.py:   Python: Saw 20000000 lines in 35 seconds.  Crunch Speed: 571428
split6.cpp:  C++   : Saw 20000000 lines in 18 seconds.  Crunch speed: 1111111

splitc1.cpp: C++   : Saw 20000000 lines in 27 seconds.  Crunch speed: 740740
splitc2.cpp: C++   : Saw 20000000 lines in 22 seconds.  Crunch speed: 909090
splitc3.cpp: C++   : Saw 20000000 lines in 20 seconds.  Crunch speed: 1000000

As we can see, the solution from the accepted answer is still fastest.

For anyone who would want to do further tests, I also put up a Github repo with all the programs from the question, the accepted answer, this answer, and additionally a Makefile and a script to generate test data: https://github.com/tobbez/string-splitting.