Buffer vs String

[Michael Monashev]

Hi!

I rewite some code from Strings to Buffers with zero data copying (I
use slice). But the new code was 10 times slower! I Buffer slower than
String?

--
Michael

[Floby]

Barrier crossing between JS and C++ is slow. Buffer is implemented by Node.js and therefore each call to .slice() is expensive because of that barrier crossing.

I advise you measure and choose the best option for your use case.

[mscdex]

It'd be helpful if you also posted the relevant code.

[Andrey]

Strings are very optimized in v8, so just replacing hot path string with buffer does not always help - benchmark first, ideally at a very low level ( statistical profiler / dtrace / generated assembly / irhydra ). For example, if you do `content += chunk` in a loop you are likely not copying strings - internally v8 keeps "content" string as linked list of chunks. Because this is low at code generation path, if you try to emulate this linked list manually in "user space" you might get slower code