fst VS itoa

I'd point you towards BurntSushi's fst crate: https://github.com/BurntSushi/fst

The fst crate effectively relies on mmap for it to work right. The folks here suggesting you just use the heap might be right, but only if using the heap is actually plausible. If your dictionary is GBs big (an FST might be bigger than available memory), then copying it the heap first would be disastrous.

You'll love what we're working on if you're interested in the implementation of:- Tantivy- Meilisearch- Finite State Transducers

Here's an example of longest prefix matching using a FST which I based my approach on: https://github.com/BurntSushi/fst/pull/104/files

Finite State Transducers

As a result, I have a plan to implement a desktop version from then and I finished today with a beta version. The desktop is based on tauri, and the dictionary index algorithm is FST (it is an awesome index algorithm).

WordBueno’s data is currently derived from Wiktionary. The backend is using Rust’s warp with fst for indexing.

No you don't. I've written multiple programs that load things instantly off the file system via memory maps. See the fst crate[1], for example, which is designed to work with memory maps.

Rust "works badly with memory mapped files" doesn't mean, "Rust can't use memory mapped files." It means, "it is difficult to reconcile Rust's safety story with memory maps." ripgrep for example uses memory maps because they are faster sometimes, and its safety contract[2] is a bit strained. But it works.

[1] - https://github.com/BurntSushi/fst/

[2] - https://docs.rs/grep-searcher/0.1.7/grep_searcher/struct.Mma...

The hyper package for the crab language actually has a dependency on a package that does itoa (among others) so IMO the problem exist there too and most non trivial packages will be bloated

I see itoa which seems trivial on the surface. The implementation is highly optimized, but it's also covering all the different cases. I'm guessing this is for printing match counts or line numbers, and if this is actually a bottleneck for ripgrep — which seems unlikely — then maybe it's worth it. You know your own needs, and if it was a bottleneck, I bet you could do just as well, if not better, with a custom, smaller, simpler solution inside ripgrep. (i.e. just make sure the power-of-ten denominators are available at compile time so the compiler won't generate divisions.)