compact_strings

A cache-friendly but limited representation of a list of strings.

Not affiliated with compact_str, this crate does not perform the same optimizations.

About

Strings are stored contiguously in a vector of bytes, with their lengths and starting indices being stored separately, rather than as a String struct holding a pointer to the data in Vec<String>.

This means that there are fewer pointers that need to be followed than in a Vec<String> which should lead to better cache locality, though this has yet to be tested.

Limitations include being unable to mutate strings stored in the vector.

This could be worked around with a limited API for mutation, but the cost of moving the rest of the bytes will be much higher than with a Vec<String>.

Benchmarks

Some benchmarks of operations expected to perform vastly differently from a Vec<String> have been benchmarked, you can view them in here