bytes.Buffer or builtin concatenation to build strings in Go?

During profiling of clive Go code I have found an interesting bit.
This is the same old discussion about deciding on using a string buffer or using raw string concatenation to build strings.

A Dir is actually a map[string]string, and, the network format is a string with form

    attr1=val1 attr2=val2 ....

The function Dir.String() builds the string from the map. The question is:

Do we use bytes.Buffer and Fprintf to append data to the string, asking at the end to Buffer.String the resulting string? Or do we use a native Go string and concatenate using "+="?

Using bytes.Buffer and Fprintf in Dir.String() yields:
BenchmarkDirString              500000      5163 ns/op

Using strings and += 
BenchmarkDirString              500000      5077 ns/op

Surprisingly (perhaps), it's both easier to write and faster to use the strings and forget
about using the bytes.Buffer. It's likely this will place more pressure in the GC, because it builds and discards intermediate strings, but, it's faster and easier.

Early clive distribution

We just placed in the Clive's web site a draft for a paper
describing the system, a link to the manual and indications to download our
(development) source tree.

This is a research system, still under construction. Be warned. Nevertheless, we
are already using it, and our main file tree and its dump are under the control of
Clive.

As an appetiser, this is the command to list some files
> l -l /zx/nautilus/src,name~*.go
--rw-r--r-- /zx/nautilus/src/bufs/bufs.go 683 15 May 14 12:43 CEST
--rw-r--r-- /zx/nautilus/src/cmd/auth/auth.go 1312 15 May 14 12:48 CEST
--rw-r--r-- /zx/nautilus/src/cmd/hist/hist.go 5875 19 May 14 14:17 CEST
--rw-r--r-- /zx/nautilus/src/cmd/ns/ns.go 4254 15 May 14 13:06 CEST
--rw-r--r-- /zx/nautilus/src/cmd/nsh/nsh.go 14719 21 May 14 15:24 CEST

and this is how the more interesting rm /zx/nautilus/src,name~*.go is implemented

// In our example, path is /zx/nautilus/src, and pred is name~*.go

dirc := rns.Find(path, pred, "/", 0)

errors := []chan error{}

for dir := range dirc {

// get a handle for the directory entry server

wt, err := zx.RWDirTree(dir)

if err != nil {

dbg.Warn("%s: tree: %s", dir["path"], err)

continue

}

errc := wt.Remove(dir["path"])

errors = append(errors, ec)

}

for _, errc := range errors {

if err := <-errc; err != nil {

dbg.Warn("%s: %s", dir["path"], err)

}

}

Enjoy. The clivezx group at googlegroups is a public discussion group where we will make further announces regarding clive, and host any public discussion about it. You are invited to join.