dart efficient string processing techniques? - string

Question

I strings in the format of name:key:dataLength:data and these strings can often be chained together. for example "aNum:n:4:9879aBool:b:1:taString:s:2:Hi" this would map to an object something like:
{
aNum: 9879,
aBool: true,
aString: "Hi"
}
I have a method for parsing a string in this format but I'm not sure whether it's use of substring is the most efficient way of pprocessing the string, is there a more efficient way of processing strings in this fashion (repeatedly chopping off the front section):
Map<string, dynamic> fromString(String s){
Map<String, dynamic> _internal = new Map();
int start = 0;
while(start < s.length){
int end;
List<String> parts = new List<String>(); //0 is name, 1 is key, 2 is data length, 3 is data
for(var i = 0; i < 4; i++){
end = i < 3 ? s.indexOf(':') : num.parse(parts[2]);
parts[i] = s.substring(start, end);
start = i < 3 ? end + 1 : end;
}
var tranType = _tranTypesByKey[parts[1]]; //this is just a map to an object which has a function that can convert the data section of the string into an object
_internal[parts[0]] = tranType._fromStr(parts[3]);
}
return _internal;
}

Answer 1

I would try s.split(':') and process the resulting list.
If you do a lot of such operations you should consider creating benchmarks tests, try different techniques and compare them.
If you would still need this line
s = i < 3 ? s.substring(idx + 1) : s.substring(idx);
I would avoid creating a new substring in each iteration but instead just keep track of the next position.

Answer 2

You have to decide how important performance is relative to readability and maintainability of the code.
That said, you should not be cutting off the head of the string repeatedly. That is guaranteed to be inefficient - it'll take time that is quadratic in the number of records in your string, just creating those tail strings.
For parsing each field, you can avoid doing substrings on the length and type fields. For the length field, you can build the number yourself:
int index = ...;
// index points to first digit of length.
int length = 0;
int charCode = source.codeUnitAt(index++);
while (charCode != CHAR_COLON) {
length = 10 * length + charCode - 0x30;
charCode = source.codeUnitAt(index++);
}
// index points to the first character of content.
Since lengths are usually small integers (less than 2<<31), this is likely to be more efficient than creating a substring and calling int.parse.
The type field is a single ASCII character, so you could use codeUnitAt to get its ASCII value instead of creating a single-character string (and then your content interpretation lookup will need to switch on character code instead of character string).
For parsing content, you could pass the source string, start index and length instead of creating a substring. Then the boolean parser can also just read the code unit instead of the singleton character string, the string parser can just make the substring, and the number parser will likely have to make a substring too and call double.parse.
It would be convenient if Dart had a double.parseSubstring(source, [int from = 0, int to]) that could parse a substring as a double without creating the substring.