Massive fprintf speed difference without “-std=c99”

Question

I had been struggling for weeks with a poor-performing translator I had written. On the following simple bechmark

#include

int main()
{
    i         


        

Answer 1

After some digging in the source code, I have found why the MinGW function is so terribly slow:

At the beginning of a [v,f,s]printf in MinGW, there is some innocent-looking initialization code:

__pformat_t stream = {
    dest,                   /* output goes to here        */
    flags &= PFORMAT_TO_FILE | PFORMAT_NOLIMIT, /* only these valid initially */
    PFORMAT_IGNORE,             /* no field width yet         */
    PFORMAT_IGNORE,             /* nor any precision spec     */
    PFORMAT_RPINIT,             /* radix point uninitialised  */
    (wchar_t)(0),               /* leave it unspecified       */
    0,                          /* zero output char count     */
    max,                        /* establish output limit     */
    PFORMAT_MINEXP          /* exponent chars preferred   */
};

However, PFORMAT_MINEXP is not what it appears to be:

#ifdef _WIN32
# define PFORMAT_MINEXP    __pformat_exponent_digits() 
# ifndef _TWO_DIGIT_EXPONENT
#  define _get_output_format()  0 
#  define _TWO_DIGIT_EXPONENT   1
# endif
static __inline__ __attribute__((__always_inline__))
int __pformat_exponent_digits( void )
{
  char *exponent_digits = getenv( "PRINTF_EXPONENT_DIGITS" );
  return ((exponent_digits != NULL) && ((unsigned)(*exponent_digits - '0') < 3))
    || (_get_output_format() & _TWO_DIGIT_EXPONENT)
    ? 2
    : 3
    ;
}

This winds up getting called every time I want to print, and getenv on windows must not be very quick. Replacing that define with a 2 brings the runtime back to where it should be.

---

So, the answer comes down to this: when using -std=c99 or any ANSI-compliant mode, MinGW switches the CRT runtime with its own. Normally, this wouldn't be an issue, but the MinGW lib had a bug which slowed its formatting functions down far beyond anything imaginable.