René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"buffer: optimize Buffer.toString('hex') for small buffers with stack allocation","articleBody":"While looking into buffer optimizations ([nodejs/node#61871](https://github.com/nodejs/node/pull/61871)), I noticed that `Buffer.toString('hex')` heap allocates a temporary buffer for every call even for tiny inputs like a SHA-256 digest\n\nI tried using a 512 byte stack buffer for small inputs (\u003c=256 bytes / 512 hex chars) and calling **NewFromOneByte** directly, skipping ExternOneByteString entirely. This covers all the common cases SHA-256, SHA-512, UUIDs, HMAC signatures, MongoDB ObjectIds, etc.\n\nLet me know what you guys think of this (runs=60)\n\n```\n                                                                    confidence improvement accuracy (*)   (**)  (***)\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=1 args=1 encoding='hex'           ***     34.44 %       ±1.05% ±1.39% ±1.80%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=1 args=3 encoding='hex'           ***     32.38 %       ±2.10% ±2.79% ±3.61%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=1024 args=1 encoding='hex'        ***     -1.11 %       ±0.62% ±0.82% ±1.07%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=1024 args=3 encoding='hex'                -0.84 %       ±0.88% ±1.17% ±1.51%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=128 args=1 encoding='hex'         ***     29.00 %       ±1.67% ±2.22% ±2.88%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=128 args=3 encoding='hex'         ***     30.72 %       ±0.79% ±1.05% ±1.35%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=256 args=1 encoding='hex'         ***     26.65 %       ±0.93% ±1.23% ±1.59%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=256 args=3 encoding='hex'         ***     27.13 %       ±1.46% ±1.93% ±2.49%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=512 args=1 encoding='hex'          **     -1.24 %       ±0.85% ±1.12% ±1.44%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=512 args=3 encoding='hex'          **     -0.63 %       ±0.41% ±0.55% ±0.71%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=64 args=1 encoding='hex'          ***     37.50 %       ±1.65% ±2.18% ±2.81%\nbuffers/buffer-tostring.js n=1000000 len=64 args=3 encoding='hex'          ***     39.28 %       ±1.29% ±1.72% ±2.23%\n\nBe aware that when doing many comparisons the risk of a false-positive\nresult increases. In this case, there are 12 comparisons, you can thus\nexpect the following amount of false-positive results:\n  0.60 false positives, when considering a   5% risk acceptance (*, **, ***),\n  0.12 false positives, when considering a   1% risk acceptance (**, ***),\n  0.01 false positives, when considering a 0.1% risk acceptance (***)\n```\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/thisalihassan","@type":"Person","name":"thisalihassan"},"datePublished":"2026-03-05T17:56:07.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":5},"url":"https://github.com/194/performance/issues/194"}