For those readers who like jumping to the last page of a novel to decide if they want to read it or not, head down to the next section for the results. If you’d like to dive back in to a particular part, head back over to the Table of Contents.
For those readers who’ve read the whole series: thank you!
Table of Results: Normal Operating Conditions
| Library | Ergonomics | Safety | Performance (mm:ss ± %) | Memory Usage (mb ± %) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scala Standard Libraries | 😐 | 😕 | 00:36.643 ± 1.91 % | 916.20 ± 7.59 % |
| better-files | 😀 | 😕 | 00:36.818 ± 2.46 % | 920.19 ± 9.03 % |
| Akka Streams | 😐 | 😀 | 00:55.586 ± 2.30 % | 1434.66 ± 0.42 % |
| fs2-io | 😀 | 😀 | 01:28.475 ± 1.04 % | 681.90 ± 0.45 % |
| FS2 (core) | 😀 | 😀 | 00:41.183 ± 4.43 % | 949.69 ± 13.13 % |
| Java Standard Libraries | 😕 | 😞 | 01:17.751 ± 4.42 % | 321.51 ± 7.93 % |
Table of Results: Memory Constrained Conditions
| Library | Ergonomics | Safety | Performance (mm:ss ± %) | Memory Usage (mb ± %) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scala Standard Libraries | 😐 | 😕 | 02:02.973 ± 8.83 % | 365.64 ± 0.06 % |
| better-files | 😀 | 😕 | 02:04.564 ± 3.09 % | 365.59 ± 0.07 % |
| Akka Streams | 😐 | 😀 | 03:51.666 ± 4.68 % | 367.27 ± 0.56 % |
| fs2-io | 😀 | 😀 | 11:46.379 ± 26.66 % | 365.86 ± 0.05 % |
| FS2 (core) | 😀 | 02:24.048 ± 31.37 % | 365.77 ± 0.07 % | |
| Java Standard Libraries | 😕 | 😞 | 03:00.161 ± 23.98 % | 328.89 ± 9.71 % |
Recommendations
- The Scala Standard Library: solid, but there are better options
- better-files: great for simple one-offs, but doesn’t scale with complexity
- Akka Streams: when you absolutely must have backpressure, but not worth the speed & memory penalty in most cases
- fs2-io: keep an eye on this one, but pass for now
- FS2 (core): a solid default
- Java: only if there’s no access to a Scala compiler, or memory on the target machine is extremely constrained
A Sanity Check
Even the slowest chewed through 18 million records over the course of a 3.4G file in under a minute and a half, under normal conditions, so the differences probably aren’t worth redoing code that already exists.
A green-field project on the other hand …
