[BigString] Fix accidentally quadratic BigString.init

When ingesting a `String` instance, `BigString` assumes that the input string has a reasonably efficient UTF-8 view.

Unfortunately, that is very much not the case when the input happens to be backed by a bridged NSString object — it appears that in this case, the ingester loop invokes some operation(s) with linear complexity in the size of the entire input, rendering the ingester’s overall complexity quadratic.

The BigString ingester is only expected to operate within a single chunk at the time. It’s unclear precisely which operation triggers the quadratic behavior; ideally we should figure it out and resolve it with a more targeted fix.

In the meantime, a blunt stopgap fix is to force-transcode the input string to UTF-8 at the time the ingester is initialized. This unnecessarily wastes some (temporary) memory on holding the transcoded string, but it avoids the quadratic cliff.

Author: lorentey

Benchmarks/Sources/Benchmarks/BigStringBenchmarks.swift

@@ -0,0 +1,108 @@
+//===----------------------------------------------------------------------===//
+//
+// This source file is part of the Swift Collections open source project
+//
+// Copyright (c) 2024 Apple Inc. and the Swift project authors
+// Licensed under Apache License v2.0 with Runtime Library Exception
+//
+// See https://swift.org/LICENSE.txt for license information
+//
+//===----------------------------------------------------------------------===//
+
+import CollectionsBenchmark
+import _RopeModule
+import Foundation
+
+let someLatinSymbols: [UnicodeScalar] = [
+  0x20 ..< 0x7f,
+  0xa1 ..< 0xad,
+  0xae ..< 0x2af,
+  0x300 ..< 0x370,
+  0x1e00 ..< 0x1eff,
+].flatMap {
+  $0.map { UnicodeScalar($0)! }
+}
+
+extension UnicodeScalar {
+  static func randomLatin(
+    using rng: inout some RandomNumberGenerator
+  ) -> Self {
+    someLatinSymbols.randomElement(using: &rng)!
+  }
+}
+
+extension String.UnicodeScalarView {
+  static func randomLatin(
+    runeCount: Int, using rng: inout some RandomNumberGenerator
+  ) -> Self {
+    var result = String.UnicodeScalarView()
+    for _ in 0 ..< runeCount {
+      result.append(UnicodeScalar.randomLatin(using: &rng))
+    }
+    return result
+  }
+}
+
+extension String {
+  static func randomLatin(
+    runeCount: Int, using rng: inout some RandomNumberGenerator
+  ) -> Self {
+    let text = String.UnicodeScalarView.randomLatin(
+      runeCount: runeCount, using: &rng)
+    return String(text)
+  }
+}
+
+struct NativeStringInput {
+  let value: String
+
+  init(runeCount: Int, using rng: inout some RandomNumberGenerator) {
+    self.value = String.randomLatin(runeCount: runeCount, using: &rng)
+  }
+}
+
+struct BridgedStringInput {
+  let value: String
+
+  init(runeCount: Int, using rng: inout some RandomNumberGenerator) {
+    let string = String.randomLatin(runeCount: runeCount, using: &rng)
+    let utf16 = Array(string.utf16)
+    let cocoa = utf16.withUnsafeBufferPointer {
+      NSString(characters: $0.baseAddress!, length: $0.count)
+    }
+    self.value = cocoa as String
+  }
+}
+
+
+extension Benchmark {
+  public mutating func addBigStringBenchmarks() {
+    guard #available(macOS 13.3, iOS 16.4, watchOS 9.4, tvOS 16.4, *) else {
+      return
+    }
+
+    self.registerInputGenerator(for: NativeStringInput.self) { c in
+      var rng = SystemRandomNumberGenerator()
+      return NativeStringInput(runeCount: c, using: &rng)
+    }
+
+    self.registerInputGenerator(for: BridgedStringInput.self) { c in
+      var rng = SystemRandomNumberGenerator()
+      return BridgedStringInput(runeCount: c, using: &rng)
+    }
+
+    self.addSimple(
+      title: "BigString init from native string",
+      input: NativeStringInput.self
+    ) { input in
+      blackHole(BigString(input.value))
+    }
+
+    self.addSimple(
+      title: "BigString init from bridged string",
+      input: BridgedStringInput.self
+    ) { input in
+      blackHole(BigString(input.value))
+    }
+  }
+}

Benchmarks/Sources/benchmark-tool/main.swift

@@ -37,6 +37,7 @@ benchmark.addHeapBenchmarks()
 benchmark.addBitSetBenchmarks()
 benchmark.addTreeSetBenchmarks()
 benchmark.addCppBenchmarks()
+benchmark.addBigStringBenchmarks()
 #if os(macOS) || os(iOS) || os(watchOS) || os(tvOS)
 benchmark.addFoundationBenchmarks()
 #endif

Sources/RopeModule/BigString/Basics/BigString+Ingester.swift

@@ -40,12 +40,21 @@ extension BigString {
 
     init(_ input: Substring) {
       self.input = input
+      self.input.makeContiguousUTF8()
       self.start = input.startIndex
       self.state = _CharacterRecognizer()
     }
 
     init(_ input: Substring, startState: __owned _CharacterRecognizer) {
       self.input = input
+      // Prevent accidentally quadratic operation by ensuring that we have
+      // a native UTF-8 string.
+      // FIXME: This is wasteful: if `input` happens to be a bridged
+      // FIXME: NSString instance, then it temporarily allocates a full
+      // FIXME: copy of the (transcoded) input string, only to then copy
+      // FIXME: its pieces into the tree later.
+      // FIXME: We should have a direct ingester path for native UTF-16 data.
+      self.input.makeContiguousUTF8()
       self.start = input.startIndex
       self.state = startState
     }