C# port of Daniel Lemire's fast_float fully ported from C++ to C#. It is up to 9 times faster than the standard library in some cases while providing exact results.
Get Started
$ dotnet add package csFastFloatReadme
csFastFloat : a fast and accurate float parser
C# port of Daniel Lemire's fast_float fully ported from C++ to C#. In older versions (5.0 and under) it is up to 9 times faster than the standard library in some cases while providing exact results.
Note
An important portion of our work had been merged to .NET Runtime within version 7.0 of the .NET Framework.
Benchmarks
We use the realistic files in /data. The mesh.txt data file contains numbers that are easier to parse whereas the canada.txt data file is representative of a more challenging scenario. Synthetic.txt contains 150 000 random floats. We compare the Double.Parse() function from the runtime library with our FastFloat.ParseDouble() function. The ParseNumberString() only function parses the string itself without any float computation: it might represent an upper bound on the possible performance.
BenchmarkDotNet=v0.12.1, OS=ubuntu 20.04 (container)
AMD EPYC 7262, 1 CPU, 16 logical and 8 physical cores
.NET Core SDK=5.0.102
[Host] : .NET Core 5.0.2 (CoreCLR 5.0.220.61120, CoreFX 5.0.220.61120), X64 RyuJIT
.NET Core 5.0 : .NET Core 5.0.2 (CoreCLR 5.0.220.61120, CoreFX 5.0.220.61120), X64 RyuJIT
Job=.NET Core 5.0 Runtime=.NET Core 5.0
| Method | FileName | Mean | Min | Ratio | MFloat/s | MB/s |
|------------------------------- |------------------- |----------:|----------:|------:|---------:|---------:|
| FastFloat.TryParseDouble() | data/canada.txt | 4.586 ms | 4.559 ms | 0.12 | 24.38 | 458.00 |
| 'ParseNumberString() only' | data/canada.txt | 2.472 ms | 2.411 ms | 0.07 | 46.10 | 866.13 |
| Double.Parse() | data/canada.txt | 37.537 ms | 37.159 ms | 1.00 | 2.99 | 56.19 |
| | | | | | | |
| FastFloat.TryParseDouble() | data/mesh.txt | 1.834 ms | 1.834 ms | 0.27 | 39.81 | 338.05 |
| 'ParseNumberString() only' | data/mesh.txt | 1.168 ms | 1.164 ms | 0.17 | 62.71 | 532.43 |
| Double.Parse() | data/mesh.txt | 6.850 ms | 6.788 ms | 1.00 | 10.76 | 91.34 |
| | | | | | | |
| FastFloat.TryParseDouble() | data/synthetic.txt | 5.147 ms | 5.118 ms | 0.11 | 29.31 | 551.44 |
| 'ParseNumberString() only' | data/synthetic.txt | 2.655 ms | 2.653 ms | 0.05 | 56.54 | 1063.78 |
| Double.Parse() | data/synthetic.txt | 48.744 ms | 48.283 ms | 1.00 | 3.11 | 58.45 |