Parsing Protobuf at 2+GB/S: How I Learned to Love Tail Calls in C
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2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
First comments on top threads
HN comment orderA very interesting trick! In my opinion, the big takeaway here is that if you are willing to write your C code in tail call style, you can get a lot of control over which variables are stored in machine registers. In the x86-64 ABI, the first 6 function parameters are guaranteed to be passed via registers. Obviously, this is architecture-specific. Other architectures may use a different calling convention that ruins this kind of manual register allocation. I'd imagine that…
A C standard proposal exists for tail call [0], in the form of "return goto (expression);". What I like about it, over standardizing [[musttail]], is that lifetimes of local objects are guaranteed to end. This makes it possible to implement without extensive escape analysis. [0] https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n3266.htm#5...
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 966
- Total comments
- 350
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-04-21 | Parsing Protobuf at 2+GB/S: How I Learned to Love Tail Calls in C | haberman | 6 | 0 |
| 2021-04-22 | Parsing Protobuf at 2+GB/S: How I Learned to Love Tail Calls in C | adrianN | 4 | 0 |
| 2021-04-25 | Parsing Protobuf at 2+GB/S: How I Learned to Love Tail Calls in CFirst breakout · Best thread | signa11 | 586 | 190 |
| 2022-12-06 | Parsing Protobuf at 2+GB/S: How I Learned to Love Tail Calls in C (2021) | colinprince | 1 | 0 |
| 2023-08-19 | Parsing Protobuf at 2+GB/s (2021) | tentacleuno | 3 | 0 |
| 2024-08-19 | Parsing protobuf at 2+GB/s: how I learned to love tail calls in C (2021)Hall induction · Latest 20+ point return | fanf2 | 366 | 160 |