Can I precompile the format string in String.format? (Or do any other thing to make formatting logs faster?)

Question

It is well known that String.format() performance is terrible. I see big possible improvements in my (and probably very common) typical case. I print same structure of data many times. Let imagine the structure like "x:%d y:%d z:%d". I expect that the main trouble with String.format() is that it has to always parse formatting string. My question is: Is there some ready made class which would allow to read formatting string only once and then allow to quickly give string when variable parameters filled?? Usage shall look like this:

PreString ps = new PreString("x:%d y:%d z:%d");
String s;
for(int i=0;i<1000;i++){
    s = ps.format(i,i,i); 
}

I know it is possible - following is my quick & dirty example which do what I'm talking about and is about ~10 times faster at my machine:

public interface myPrintable{
    boolean isConst();
    String prn(Object o);
    String prn();
}

public class MyPrnStr implements myPrintable{
    String s;
    public MyPrnStr(String s){this.s =s;}
    @Override public boolean isConst() { return true; }
    @Override public String prn(Object o) { return s; }
    @Override public String prn() { return s; }
}

public class MyPrnInt implements myPrintable{
    public MyPrnInt(){}
    @Override  public boolean isConst() { return false; }
    @Override  public String prn(Object o) { return String.valueOf((Integer)o);  }
    @Override  public String prn() { return "NumMissing";   }
}

public class FastFormat{
    myPrintable[]      obj    = new myPrintable[100];
    int                objIdx = 0;
    StringBuilder      sb     = new StringBuilder();

    public FastFormat() {}

    public void addObject(myPrintable o) {  obj[objIdx++] = o;   }

    public String format(Object... par) {
        sb.setLength(0);
        int parIdx = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < objIdx; i++) {
            if(obj[i].isConst()) sb.append(obj[i].prn());
            else                 sb.append(obj[i].prn(par[parIdx++]));
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

It is used like this:

FastFormat ff = new FastFormat();
ff.addObject(new MyPrnStr("x:"));
ff.addObject(new MyPrnInt());
ff.addObject(new MyPrnStr(" y:"));
ff.addObject(new MyPrnInt());
ff.addObject(new MyPrnStr(" z:"));
ff.addObject(new MyPrnInt());
for (int i = 0; i < rpt; i++) {
    s = ff.format(i,i,i);
}

when I compare with

long beg = System.nanoTime();
for (int i = 0; i < rpt; i++) {
    s = String.format("x:%d y:%d z:%d", i, i, i);
}
long diff = System.nanoTime() - beg;

For 1e6 iteration pre-formatting improves result by factor of ~10:

time [ns]: String.format()     (+90,73%)  3 458 270 585 
time [ns]: FastFormat.format() (+09,27%)    353 431 686 

[EDIT]

As Steve Chaloner replied there is a MessageFormat which is quite doing what I want. So I tried the code:

MessageFormat mf = new MessageFormat("x:{0,number,integer} y:{0,number,integer} z:{0,number,integer}");
Object[] uo = new Object[3];
for (int i = 0; i < rpt; i++) {
    uo[0]=uo[1]=uo[2] = i;
    s = mf.format(uo);
}

And it is faster only by factor of 2. Not the factor of 10 which I hoped. Again see measurement for 1M iteration (JRE 1.8.0_25-b18 32bit):

time [s]: String.format()     (+63,18%)  3.359 146 913 
time [s]: FastFormat.format() (+05,99%)  0.318 569 218 
time [s]: MessageFormat       (+30,83%)  1.639 255 061 

[EDIT2]

As Slanec replied there is org.slf4j.helpers.MessageFormatter. (I tried library version slf4j-1.7.12)

I did tried to compare code:

Object[] uo2 = new Object[3];
beg = System.nanoTime();
for(long i=rpt;i>0;i--){
    uo2[0]=uo2[1]=uo2[2] = i;
    s = MessageFormatter.arrayFormat("x: {} y: {} z: {}",uo2).getMessage();
}

with code for MessageFormat given above in section [EDIT]. I did get following results for looping it 1M times:

Time MessageFormatter [s]: 1.099 880 912
Time MessageFormat    [s]: 2.631 521 135
speed up : 2.393 times

So MessageFormatter is best answer so far yet my simple example is still little bit faster... So any ready made faster library proposal?

Answer 1

It sounds like you want MessageFormat

From the documentation:

The following example creates a MessageFormat instance that can be used repeatedly:

 int fileCount = 1273;
 String diskName = "MyDisk";
 Object[] testArgs = {new Long(fileCount), diskName};

 MessageFormat form = new MessageFormat(
     "The disk \"{1}\" contains {0} file(s).");
 System.out.println(form.format(testArgs));

Answer 2

If you're looking for a fast implementation, you need to look outside the JDK. You probably use slf4j for logging anyway, so let's look at its MessageFormatter:

MessageFormatter.arrayFormat("x:{} y:{} z:{}", new Object[] {i, i, i}).getMessage();

On my machine (and a crude and flawed microbenchmark), it's around 1/6 slower than your FastFormat class, and around 5-10 times faster than either String::format or MessageFormat.

Answer 3

I said I would deliver, and here it is. My pre-compilation-capable string formatting (working proof-of-concept) library: https://gitlab.com/janecekpetr/string-format

Using

StringFormat.format("x:{} y:{} z:{}", i, i, i)

I get very similar numbers to slf4j and log4j2.

However, when using

CompiledStringFormat format = StringFormat.compile("x:{} y:{} z:{}");

// and then, in the loop
format.format(i, i, i)

I get roughly 1/3 better numbers than your FastFormat. Note that at this point, you must be formatting A LOT of strings to get significant differences.