[erlang-questions] clarify: why bit syntax so slow + benchmark code

[Mateusz Berezecki]

On Nov 16, 2007, at 4:09 PM, Per Gustafsson wrote:

>>
>
> It is slow because for each iteration a two sub-binary structure  
> (about 5 words) is allocated. This will be optimized in the next  
> release of Erlang/OTP, but your code is sub optimal anyway, if you  
> want good performance you should write:
>
> test1(<<>>) -> done;
> test1(<<_A, Rest/binary>>) ->
>       test1(Rest).
>
> That is, you should not first pattern match and create a sub-binary  
> and then match against that one.

It was written that way to show that some calculations are done on that
matched value later.  Generally speaking
I'm having a trouble parsing a stream of data
where each control frame is single byte and I have no knowledge of
the stream unless I parse that single byte (i.e. and ~3-4 bytes after  
it - they vary depending
on that first single byte).

I'm curious, can erlang achieve good performance with that kind of  
stream data filtering?


Mateusz Berezecki