Re: std::string::assign range

From:
Victor Bazarov <v.bazarov@comcast.invalid>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 06 Mar 2015 10:00:03 -0500
Message-ID:
<mdcfc6$1sp$1@dont-email.me>
On 3/5/2015 8:11 PM, Christopher Pisz wrote:

On 3/5/2015 4:47 PM, Victor Bazarov wrote:

On 3/5/2015 5:26 PM, Victor Bazarov wrote:

On 3/5/2015 5:17 PM, Christopher Pisz wrote:

On 3/5/2015 3:35 PM, Ben Bacarisse wrote:

Christopher Pisz <nospam@notanaddress.com> writes:

I know there exists a way to copy a filestream into a string in one
line, using iterators, because I've seen it before on this newsgroup.
I looked up the documentation, but can't seem to get the syntax
right.

My attempt:

std::ifstream("test.txt");
if( !file )
{
     // Error
}

std::string textToParse;

textToParse.assign(std::istreambuf_iterator<char>(file),
std::istream_iterator<char>());


Did you mean something like this:

       file >> std::noskipws;
       std::copy(std::istream_iterator<char>(file),
                 std::istream_iterator<char>(),
                 std::inserter(textToParse, textToParse.begin()));

?

<snip>


Indeed!

Full listing (make your own timer and exception classes):

// Shared Includes
#include "Exception.h"
#include "PerformanceTimer.h"

// Standard Includes
#include <iostream>
#include <fstream>
#include <sstream>
#include <string>

//--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

void Method1()
{
     std::ifstream file("test.txt");
     if( !file )
     {
         // Error
         throw Shared::Exception(__FILE__, __LINE__, "Cannot open test
file");
     }

     std::string textToParse;

     file >> std::noskipws;
     std::copy(std::istream_iterator<char>(file),
               std::istream_iterator<char>(),
               std::inserter(textToParse, textToParse.begin()));

     file.close();
}

//--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

void Method2()
{
     std::ifstream file("test.txt");
     if( !file )
     {
         // Error
         throw Shared::Exception(__FILE__, __LINE__, "Cannot open test
file");
     }

     std::stringstream textToParse;
     textToParse << file.rdbuf();

     file.close();
}

//--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

int main()
{
     Shared::PerformanceTimer timer;
     Method1();
     std::cout << "Method 1 :" << timer.Stop() << std::endl;

     timer.Start();
     Method2();
     std::cout << "Method 2 :" << timer.Stop() << std::endl;

}

Output:
Method 1 :0.283209
Method 2 :0.0216563

That's quite a difference! What's going on under the hood with the
iterator method?


I don't see any proof of the equality of the result of two different
methods...

Inserting into a text string, one character at a time, at the beginning,
most likely involves too many reallocations and too many copy
operations.


OK, I take it back. I obviously don't know how 'std::inserter' works.

 > Have you tried profiling your program?

Still, the only way to know for sure why the iterator method is slower
is to profile it.

V


So, I got Xperf to work after watching a few hours of videos and working
through a lot of out of date information.

It reports that
Method 1 has 44 heap allocations for a size of 217,357.
Method 2 has 26 heap allocations for a size of 194,437.

I rely on my high precision timer for the time of execution for both.

Method 1 :0.283209
Method 2 :0.0216563

I can't really find anything about istream_iterator or std::inserter
though. I like the code in method 1, it feels cleaner. I want to
understand if there is another step I am missing or something else I can
do similar.

It is fairly often I'd want to copy the contents of one stream to a
string or to another stream.


I took your code and changed it a bit so I could time it on Windows. It
didn't have the ~14-fold difference like in your example, only about
1.5-fold (the iterator method taking longer by ~50%). Run your test
after building it in release (with optimization) and ensure that the
text file has been placed in the file cache (by running a couple times
and only noting the last run). Or swap the methods (call the 2 before
calling 1), just to be sure.

The operation is very quick on Windows with shorter files, so profiling
here doesn't make much sense. I would venture to point out, though that
the iterator method makes more function calls, probably.

And, after all, it's QoI of the library, of course.

V
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