From bda9134c849c777b47b6b242bad9f38e5c4776ee Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jean Boussier <jean.boussier@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Apr 2026 14:53:35 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Optimize BigDecimal#to_s
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Most of the time was spent in two calls to `snprintf`, by a
simpler integer to ASCII function, it can be made several time faster.

The code is largely adapted from an earlier version of ruby/json.
ruby/json now use a much more optimized algorithm, but there are
licensing consideration so not sure it's worth optimizing that much.

Before:

```
ruby 4.0.2 (2026-03-17 revision d3da9fec82) +YJIT +PRISM [arm64-darwin25]
Warming up --------------------------------------
               22.99   408.215k i/100ms
               large   230.802k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
               22.99      4.214M (± 2.2%) i/s  (237.32 ns/i) -     21.227M in   5.040152s
               large      2.384M (± 2.6%) i/s  (419.45 ns/i) -     12.002M in   5.037698s
```

After:

```
ruby 4.0.2 (2026-03-17 revision d3da9fec82) +YJIT +PRISM [arm64-darwin25]
Warming up --------------------------------------
               22.99     1.026M i/100ms
               large   846.057k i/100ms
Calculating -------------------------------------
               22.99     10.882M (± 0.8%) i/s   (91.89 ns/i) -     55.426M in   5.093603s
               large      9.094M (± 1.0%) i/s  (109.97 ns/i) -     45.687M in   5.024549s
```

```ruby
require "bundler/inline"

gemfile do
  source 'https://rubygems.org'
  gem "benchmark-ips"
  gem "bigdecimal", path: "/Users/byroot/src/github.com/byroot/bigdecimal"
end

small = BigDecimal("29.99")
large = BigDecimal("32423094234234.23423432")
Benchmark.ips do |x|
  x.report("22.99") { small.to_s }
  x.report("large") { large.to_s }
end
```
---
 ext/bigdecimal/bigdecimal.c | 34 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
 1 file changed, 31 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/ext/bigdecimal/bigdecimal.c b/ext/bigdecimal/bigdecimal.c
index 555abebc..3234a894 100644
--- a/ext/bigdecimal/bigdecimal.c
+++ b/ext/bigdecimal/bigdecimal.c
@@ -5449,10 +5449,22 @@ VpToSpecialString(Real *a, char *buf, size_t buflen, int fPlus)
     return 0;
 }
 
+#define ULLTOA_BUFFER_SIZE 20
+static size_t Vp_ulltoa(unsigned long long number, char *buf)
+{
+    static const char digits[] = "0123456789";
+    char* tmp = buf;
+
+    do *tmp-- = digits[number % 10]; while (number /= 10);
+    return buf - tmp;
+}
+
 VP_EXPORT void
 VpToString(Real *a, char *buf, size_t buflen, size_t fFmt, int fPlus)
 /* fPlus = 0: default, 1: set ' ' before digits, 2: set '+' before digits. */
 {
+    char ulltoa_buf[ULLTOA_BUFFER_SIZE];
+    char *ulltoa_buf_end = ulltoa_buf + ULLTOA_BUFFER_SIZE;
     size_t i, n, ZeroSup;
     DECDIG shift, m, e, nn;
     char *p = buf;
@@ -5492,10 +5504,11 @@ VpToString(Real *a, char *buf, size_t buflen, size_t fFmt, int fPlus)
         while (m) {
             nn = e / m;
             if (!ZeroSup || nn) {
-                /* The reading zero(s) */
-                size_t n = (size_t)snprintf(p, plen, "%lu", (unsigned long)nn);
+                size_t n = Vp_ulltoa(nn, ulltoa_buf_end - 1);
                 if (n > plen) goto overflow;
+                MEMCPY(p, ulltoa_buf_end - n, char, n);
                 ADVANCE(n);
+
                 /* as 0.00xx will be ignored. */
                 ZeroSup = 0;    /* Set to print succeeding zeros */
             }
@@ -5514,7 +5527,22 @@ VpToString(Real *a, char *buf, size_t buflen, size_t fFmt, int fPlus)
         *(--p) = '\0';
         ++plen;
     }
-    snprintf(p, plen, "e%"PRIdSIZE, ex);
+    *p = 'e';
+    ADVANCE(1);
+
+    if (ex < 0) {
+        *p = '-';
+        ADVANCE(1);
+        ex = -ex;
+    }
+
+    size_t ex_n = Vp_ulltoa(ex, ulltoa_buf_end - 1);
+    if (ex_n > plen) goto overflow;
+    MEMCPY(p, ulltoa_buf_end - ex_n, char, ex_n);
+    ADVANCE(ex_n);
+    *p = '\0';
+    ADVANCE(1);
+
     if (fFmt) VpFormatSt(buf, fFmt);
 
   overflow: