String#underscore
Ruby Extension
fast_underscore
is a simple C extension which provides a fast implementation of Active Support's String#underscore
method.
Do I need this?
Maybe! Run a stack profiler like ruby-prof
. If String#underscore
or ActiveSupport::Inflector#underscore
is coming up near the top of the list, this gem might be for you! If not, you probably don't need it. Either way, your milage may vary depending on the type of strings on which you're calling underscore
.
Usage with Rails
ActiveSupport::Inflector#underscore
, in addition to underscoring the input will additionally take into account known acronyms. Since this can't be done at compile time, FastUnderscore
will detect when ActiveSupport
is loaded and take advantage of its knowledge of acronyms while still using the native extension.
Since the #underscore
method is used so much throughout the Rails boot process (for autoloading dependencies, determining table names, determining inverse associations, etc.), it's best to hook into Rails as early as possible. As such, for the best results in your Gemfile
add require: false
to the gem 'fast_underscore'
declaration and add require 'fast_underscore'
to the bottom of config/boot.rb
.
Is it fast?
At last check, these were the benchmarks (obtained by running bin/benchmark
):
Rails 5.1.4
Warming up --------------------------------------
ActiveSupport 2.000 i/100ms
FastUnderscore 64.000 i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
ActiveSupport 28.839 (± 6.9%) i/s - 144.000 in 5.019140s
FastUnderscore 650.151 (± 7.7%) i/s - 3.264k in 5.056094s
Comparison:
FastUnderscore: 650.2 i/s
ActiveSupport: 28.8 i/s - 22.54x slower
Rails 5.2.0
Warming up --------------------------------------
ActiveSupport 5.000 i/100ms
FastUnderscore 66.000 i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
ActiveSupport 50.055 (± 6.0%) i/s - 250.000 in 5.016223s
FastUnderscore 655.181 (± 2.1%) i/s - 3.300k in 5.038968s
Comparison:
FastUnderscore: 655.2 i/s
ActiveSupport: 50.1 i/s - 13.09x slower
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'fast_underscore'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install fast_underscore
Development
After checking out the repo, run bin/setup
to install dependencies. Then, run rake test
to run the tests. You can also run bin/console
for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.
To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install
. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb
, and then run bundle exec rake release
, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem
file to rubygems.org.
Contributing
Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/kddeisz/fast_underscore.
License
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.