From 763e3dc0d1d4cecded327e77f7c8f49d0a383c13 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jean Boussier <jean.boussier@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2020 12:20:12 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] Micro optimization: `[0...-3] = ''` is faster than
 `slice!(-3, 3)`
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I noticed a surprising amount of allocations from this idiom:

```
Allocated String Report
-----------------------------------
    109381  ""
     13344  ~/gems/zeitwerk-2.2.2/lib/zeitwerk/loader.rb:479
```

Turns out `slice!` allocates a wierd empty string for no reasons,
as well as a string containing the sliced chars we don't care about:

```ruby
>> s = "foo.rb"; MemoryProfiler.report { s.slice!(-3, 3) }.pretty_print
Allocated String Report
-----------------------------------
         1  ""
         1  (irb):20

         1  ".rb"
         1  (irb):20
```

Based on the context, I assume the `slice!` usage goal was to save some
string allocations, but turns out it actually makes things worse.

Two other candidate methods could be:

  - `byteslice`, as it ignore encoding it's marginally faster than `slice`.
  - `delete_suffix!` saves an allocation, but was introduced in Ruby 2.5.
  - `[]= ''` since that's what `slice!` end up doing internally.

Benchmark:

```ruby
require 'benchmark/ips'

Benchmark.ips do |x|
  x.report('slice!(-3, 3)') { "foo.rb".slice!(-3, 3) }
  x.report('slice(0...-3)') { "foo.rb".slice(0...-3) }
  x.report('byteslice(0...-3)') { "foo.rb".byteslice(0...-3) }
  x.report('[-3..-1] = ""') { "foo.rb"[-3..-1] = ''.freeze }
  x.report('delete_suffix!') { "foo.rb".delete_suffix!(".rb".freeze) }
end
```

```
       slice!(-3, 3)      4.939M (± 1.0%) i/s -     24.900M in   5.042534s
       slice(0...-3)      7.323M (± 1.4%) i/s -     36.774M in   5.023076s
   byteslice(0...-3)      8.126M (± 1.5%) i/s -     40.930M in   5.038314s
       [-3..-1] = ""      7.842M (± 0.7%) i/s -     39.249M in   5.005565s
      delete_suffix!     10.657M (± 5.8%) i/s -     53.283M in   5.025248s
```
---
 lib/zeitwerk/loader.rb | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/lib/zeitwerk/loader.rb b/lib/zeitwerk/loader.rb
index c7c705bb..d4182b0f 100644
--- a/lib/zeitwerk/loader.rb
+++ b/lib/zeitwerk/loader.rb
@@ -477,7 +477,7 @@ def set_autoloads_in_dir(dir, parent)
       ls(dir) do |basename, abspath|
         begin
           if ruby?(basename)
-            basename.slice!(-3, 3)
+            basename[-3..-1] = ''
             cname = inflector.camelize(basename, abspath).to_sym
             autoload_file(parent, cname, abspath)
           elsif dir?(abspath)