Issue #20394 has been updated by byroot (Jean Boussier).
What about IO::Buffer? It was introduced somewhat stealthily and its API is somewhat unique, and yet by its idea it seems to be exactly that.
I'm aware of it, but it only offer binary oriented methods. Perhaps it could be extended to offer text protocols oriented methods, but it's really starting from zero right now. If you look at @ioquatix 's own HTTP gem, it uses its own `Async::IO::Stream` class which funnily enough is a `String` subclass... https://github.com/socketry/async-io/blob/085b506b9bc5b4669f1d65b6fe1b972f09..., which kinda confirms my point that in Ruby today, the best buffer is `String`. ---------------------------------------- Feature #20394: Add an offset parameter to `String#to_i` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/20394#change-107519 * Author: byroot (Jean Boussier) * Status: Closed ---------------------------------------- ### Context I maintain the `redis-client` gem, and it comes with an optional swapable implementation in C that binds the `hiredis` C client, [which used to performs up to 5 times faster in some cases](https://github.com/redis-rb/redis-client/commit/9fabd57c6786a03fe0c6021eab5b...). I recently paired with @tenderlovemaking to try to close this gap, or even try to make the pure Ruby version faster, and we came up with several optimizations that now almost make both version on par (assuming YJIT is enabled). An important source of performance loss, is that the Redis protocol is line based and to parse it in Ruby requires to slice a lot of small strings from the buffer. To give an example, here's how an Array with two String (`["foo", "plop"]`) is serialized in RESP3 (Redis protocol): ``` *2\r\n $3\r\n foo\r\n $4\r\n plop\r\n ``` From this you can understand that a big hotspot in the parser is essentially `Integer(gets)`. With @tenderlovemaking we managed to get [a fairly significant perf boost](https://github.com/redis-rb/redis-client/commit/41b3abe94243d2598211d448c4e4...) by avoiding these string allocation using `String#getbyte` and [basically implementing a rudimentary `String#to_i(offset: )` in Ruby](https://github.com/redis-rb/redis-client/commit/41b3abe94243d2598211d448c4e4...). But while the gains are huge with YJIT enabled, they are much more tame with the interpreter. And it feels a bit wrong to have to implement this sorts of things for performance reasons. ### `String#to_i(offset: )` Similar to `String#unpack(offset:)` ([Feature #18254]), I believe `String#to_i(offset: )` would be useful. ### Alternative new `String#unpack` format Another possibility would be to add a new format to `String#pack` `String#unpack` for decimal numbers. It sounds a bit weird at first, but given it supports things like Base64 and hexadecimal, perhaps it's not that much of a stretch? -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/