Rust

lz4_flex

lz4_flex_logo

Fastest LZ4 implementation in Rust. Originally based on redox-os' lz4 compression, but now a complete rewrite. The results in the table are from a benchmark in this project (66Kb JSON) on with the block format.

Compressor	Compression	Decompression	Ratio
lz4_flex unsafe	898 MiB/s	4417 MiB/s	0.2289
lz4_flex unsafe w. checked_decode	898 MiB/s	4023 MiB/s	0.2289
lz4_flex safe	724 MiB/s	2014 MiB/s	0.2289
lzzz (lz4 1.9.3)	993 MiB/s	4193 MiB/s	0.2283
lz4_fear	456 MiB/s	976 MiB/s	0.2283
snap	861 MiB/s	941 MiB/s	0.2242

Features

Very good logo
LZ4 Block format
LZ4 Frame format (thanks @arthurprs)
High performance
1,5s clean release build time
Feature flags to configure safe/unsafe code usage
no-std support (thanks @coolreader18)
32-bit support

Usage:

Compression and decompression uses no usafe via the default feature flags "safe-encode" and "safe-decode". If you need more performance you can disable them (e.g. with no-default-features).

Safe:

lz4_flex = { version = "0.8.0" }

Performance:

lz4_flex = { version = "0.8.0", default-features = false }

Warning: If you don't trust your input and your are using the Block format, use checked-decode in order to avoid out of bounds access. When using the Frame format make sure to enable checksums.

lz4_flex = { version = "0.8.0", default-features = false, features = ["checked-decode"] }

use lz4_flex::{compress_prepend_size, decompress_size_prepended};

fn main(){
    let input: &[u8] = b"Hello people, what's up?";
    let compressed = compress_prepend_size(input);
    let uncompressed = decompress_size_prepended(&compressed).unwrap();
    assert_eq!(input, uncompressed);
}

Benchmarks

The benchmark is run with criterion, the test files are in the benches folder.

Currently 4 implementations are compared, this one, lz-fear and the c++ version via rust bindings and snappy. The lz4-flex version is tested with the feature flags safe-decode and safe-encode switched on and off.

lz4_cpp: https://crates.io/crates/lz4
lz-fear: https://github.com/main--/rust-lz-fear
snap: https://github.com/burntsushi/rust-snappy

Results v0.8.0 17-05-2021 (safe-decode and safe-encode off)

cargo bench --no-default-features

Executed on Core i7-6700 Linux Mint.

Compress

Decompress

Results v0.8.0 17-05-2021 (safe-decode and safe-encode on)

cargo bench

Executed on Core i7-6700 Linux Mint.

Compress

Decompress

Miri

Miri can be used to find issues related to incorrect unsafe usage:

MIRIFLAGS="-Zmiri-disable-isolation -Zmiri-disable-stacked-borrows" cargo miri test --no-default-features

Fuzzer

This fuzz target generates corrupted data for the decompressor. Make sure to switch to the checked_decode version in fuzz/Cargo.toml before testing this. cargo fuzz run fuzz_decomp_corrupt_block and cargo fuzz run fuzz_decomp_corrupt_frame

This fuzz target asserts that a compression and decompression rountrip returns the original input. cargo fuzz run fuzz_roundtrip and cargo fuzz run fuzz_roundtrip_frame

This fuzz target asserts compression with cpp and decompression with lz4_flex returns the original input. cargo fuzz run fuzz_roundtrip_cpp_compress

TODO

High compression

lz4_flex 0.8.1