slowdown with many files on the command line, compared to no arguments

[oconnor663]

Example using the https://github.com/keybase/client repo:

$ ls go/**/*.go | wc -l
1352

$ time rg blahblahblah go/       
rg blahblahblah go/  0.03s user 0.01s system 210% cpu 0.017 total

# <<< this is the slow one >>>
$ time rg blahblahblah go/**/*.go
rg blahblahblah go/**/*.go  0.14s user 0.01s system 104% cpu 0.137 total

$ time grep blahblahblah -r go/  
grep --color=auto blahblahblah -r go/  0.01s user 0.01s system 92% cpu 0.014 total

$ time grep blahblahblah go/**/*.go
grep --color=auto blahblahblah -r go/**/*.go  0.01s user 0.01s system 93% cpu 0.018 total

It looks like rg is slower when given a (long) list of files on the command line, than it is when it has to find those files itself. grep doesn't have this problem, so I don't think it's some confounder like my shell taking a long time to expand the glob.

[BurntSushi]

I think this is a dupe. On mobile.

On Sep 29, 2016 5:10 PM, "oconnor663" notifications@github.com wrote:

Example using the https://github.com/keybase/client repo:

$ ls go/*/.go | wc -l
1352

$ time rg blahblahblah go/
rg blahblahblah go/ 0.03s user 0.01s system 210% cpu 0.017 total

<<< this is the slow one >>>

$ time rg blahblahblah go//*.go
rg blahblahblah go//*.go 0.14s user 0.01s system 104% cpu 0.137 total

$ time grep blahblahblah -r go/
grep --color=auto blahblahblah -r go/ 0.01s user 0.01s system 92% cpu 0.014 total

$ time grep blahblahblah -r go//*.go
grep --color=auto blahblahblah -r go//*.go 0.01s user 0.01s system 93% cpu 0.018 total

It looks like rg is slower when given a (long) list of files on the
command line, than it is when it has to find those files itself. grep
doesn't have this problem, so I don't think it's some confounder like my
shell taking a long time to expand the glob.

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[BurntSushi]

Yeah, this is probably a dupe of #44. Your example is actually more embarrassing, because the positional arguments are files, not directories, which makes the reprocessing of parent ignore files even more strange.

I have some grander plans in mind on refactoring the ignore code, so fixing this will probably get lumped in with that. For now, I think we can just track #44.

Thanks for the report!

[oconnor663]

@BurntSushi I should've mentioned before, --no-ignore and --no-ignore-parent don't affect the slowdown here, unlike in #44. It might be a different cause?

[BurntSushi]

Oh. Neat. I didn't check that. I'll look into it.

On Sep 29, 2016 21:10, "oconnor663" notifications@github.com wrote:

@BurntSushi https://github.com/BurntSushi I should've mentioned before,
--no-ignore and --no-ignore-parent don't affect the slowdown here,
unlike in #44 #44. It might
be a different cause?

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[BurntSushi]

You're right, something different is going on than what's in #44.

[oconnor663]

cc @patrickxb who actually found this.

[BurntSushi]

Sadly (and embarrassingly), the blame for this can be placed squarely on my implementation of docopt. Virtually all of the time is spent in matching the argv string against the docopt matcher. My guess is that I could re-implement this to go faster, but I don't have the energy for a rewrite of docopt.

I think this means I should admit defeat switch to clap. :-) cc @kbknapp

[kbknapp]

@BurntSushi if "admitting defeat" means having spent all your time writing some of the best parsers and libraries known to Rust (perhaps any language), and helping ensure the Rust ecosystem/users maintains or even exceeds current levels of quality and professionalism....well then I aspire to one day "admit defeat" as well 😉

As for this issue, I'd like to do a build using clap just to compare the results. I'll post the results in the next day or so once I have time to make the build and do the tests.

[BurntSushi]

@kbknapp Haha aww shucks. FWIW, clap is unbelievably well maintained. I hadn't looked at it for a while, but when I checked it the other day I was completely blown away.

To give you more context: you probably won't notice much of a difference in standard usage. The problem appears specifically when there's a long list of positional file arguments. Docopt struggles with this because it uses a weird backtracking algorithm to match argv against its matcher. When argv is large, there's a significant slow down. I doubt clap will even notice it at all.

Converting ripgrep over to clap seems like a largeish undertaking, so please don't kill yourself over it! (In the sense that there's a lot of options, not in the sense that Docopt weirdness is spread throughout ripgrep.) I do kind of want to do it myself as a forcing function to get more familiar with clap, but I won't stop you. :-) I will note that this is kind of high on my priority list because it's really easy to provoke this.

[oconnor663]

Woah. Maybe there's some hack we could stick on the front of the whole thing (either docopt, or ripgrep) to handle the specific case of a ton of positional args, that wouldn't need a complete rewrite? I've never looked at docopt internals though.

[BurntSushi]

I'm sure there's probably something. I'm just not feeling up to digging around in Docopt internals. Everything about it is too complex. (Which is my failing.)

[kbknapp]

If you'd like to do the converting that's cool with me, I'll just standby for any questions/suggestions!

Instead of doing a full re-write I just a simple test (called lof for lots-o-files) to see if it would in fact make a difference:

$ find ~/.config -print | wc -l
4291

$ time lof-docopt ~/.config/**/*
0.52s user 0.11s system 99% cpu 0.629 total

$ time lof-clap ~/.config/**/*
0.05s user 0.02s system 97% cpu 0.075 total

I know it's not super scientific or perfect, but gives a rough estimate. Here's what I used:

Docopt:

const USAGE: &'static str = "
Lots of Files

Usage:
  lof <files>...

";

#[derive(RustcDecodable)]
struct Args {
    arg_files: Vec<String>,
}

fn main() {
    let args: Args = Docopt::new(USAGE)
        .and_then(|d| d.decode())
        .unwrap_or_else(|e| e.exit());
}

And clap:

fn main() {
    let m = App::new("lof")
        .arg(Arg::with_name("files")
            .multiple(true))
        .get_matches();
}

I also did version where I looped through and printed out the values both as Strings and OsStrings, but the results were basically no different.