lance-format / lance-format/lance

Better determination of FSST output buffer size

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#2,606 10 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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A-encoding enhancement
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
7.1k
Forks
852
Avg merge
3d 18h
Merged PRs (30d)
272

Description

Currently, the FSST output buffer is initialized to 8 * compressed_length. This should be safe (no FSST symbol is more than 8 bytes I think) but it is slow and excessive. We can store the original length of the string as part of the encoded page and use that to size the output buffer exactly.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the FSST encoder and the encoded-page layout described in the issue, then trace how compressed strings determine their output buffer size. Store the original string length in the encoded page and use it for exact allocation; done means the buffer is no longer sized as 8 times the compressed length and existing FSST behavior remains correct.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
data-engineering, performance
Issue type
Refactor
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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