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Hello guys.

I know, the header is not clear enough. Let me explain the situation in detail.

I've a server which takes messages from clients, then check if the message type matches any of the existing types via if - else if(there are more than 30 else if statements)

Thinking having these many else ifs would be bad for performance, I've decided to use an std::map. Specifically this one:

std::map<std::string,boost::function<void(std::string)>


Then I've decided to compare these 2 techniques' performances.

What I have tried:

Test code for if-else takes 17 milliseconds.

 std::string s = "test3";
 for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {


    if (s == "test1") test1("asd");
    else if (s == "test2") test2("asd");
    else if (s=="test3") test3("asd");

}



Test code for std::map takes 30 milliseconds.
std::map<std::string, boost::function<void(std::string)>> testmap
{
    {"test1",boost::bind(&TcpServer::test1, this, _1) },
    {"test2",boost::bind(&TcpServer::test2, this, _1) },
    {"test3",boost::bind(&TcpServer::test3, this, _1) }
};

std::string s="test3";

for (int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
    testmap[s]("asd");
}




Why is using std::map inefficient compared to 1 if and 2 else ifs. Especially considering I don't even check if map has the key I'm searching for, which increases the value to 49 milliseconds.
Posted
Updated 19-Oct-21 12:16pm
v3
Comments
Rick York 20-Oct-21 3:41am    
It could make for an interesting experiment to see where the break-even point is between using a map and a linear search. I would probably use a different set of strings than the three you have. I found a list of over 460K words and I would probably use a random set of them for a test like this. I might just do this if I get some time soon.
Shao Voon Wong 20-Oct-21 6:50am    
You can try std::unordered_map which is a hashed table.
Weird Japanese Shows 20-Oct-21 7:10am    
it's faster if I don't check if the unordered_map has the key or not but slower if I check it. But it surely is alot better than std::map
Shao Voon Wong 21-Oct-21 3:47am    
You can follow my tip on unordered_map: https://www.codeproject.com/Tips/5255442/Cplusplus14-20-Heterogeneous-Lookup-Benchmark to avoid the std::string instantiation during find. In my experience of a switch statement with a few hundred of cases because I have that many message types to process, unordered_map can be faster because there are many branching in this massive switch-case. Of course, your mileage may vary. When you only have a few if-else, I'll say don't bother.

1 solution

At a guess: the strings "test1", "test2", "test3" are all very short and maybe the compiler is smart enough to use a "small string optimization", and ends up comparing 64bit ints rather than doing a string compare.
You also have a very small test set. I expect that the overhead to calculate the string hash outweighs the efficiencies of a hash lookup for only 3 items. The hash lookup might get better performance in a larger test case, since it will be able to do a binary search over the map to find the right key, whereas the multiple ifs will search linearly. Now, the linear search might also be an improvement over a map if you know that say 60% of the message types would be "type7" and 30% are "type2", since you can test for those two message types first, and then proceed with the others.
Bottom line: try testing with a larger test set - e.g "test1" ... "test10" and see if the overhead for calculating the hash is the culprit here.
 
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Comments
k5054 19-Oct-21 18:15pm    
Checking gcc-11 and clang at the compiler explorer (https://godbolt.org/), the small string optimizations don't come into play - even at -O3 both compilers make a call to std::string.compare(). Just FYI.
Weird Japanese Shows 19-Oct-21 18:18pm    
Checked with 14 values :
if-else takes 30ms.
std::map takes 56ms.
std::map with checking if the value exists in the map takes 99ms.
Weird Japanese Shows 19-Oct-21 18:29pm    
When I randomize the picked key each iteration, map is faster than if-else if I don't check weather map contains the key or not. I assume compiler keeps track of most selected else-if statements.
Greg Utas 19-Oct-21 19:15pm    
I would have answered in much the same way as k5054. Whether a std::map or a sequence of if/else-if statements is faster will greatly depend on the number of strings, their distribution, and the order of the else-if statements.

When you say you assume that the "compiler keeps track of most selected else-if statements", do you mean that it arranges the else-if statements in order of how often they are reached? If so, that couldn't be true in a compiled language, and it's very unlikely in an interpreted language (because if performance was that important, the code would be compiled to start with).

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