strings: optimize Repeat for common substrings

According to static analysis of Go source code known by the module proxy,
spaces, dashes, zeros, and tabs are the most commonly repeated string literals.

Out of ~69k total calls to Repeat:
* ~25k calls are repeats of " "
* ~7k calls are repeats of "-"
* ~4k calls are repeats of "0"
* ~2k calls are repeats of "="
* ~2k calls are repeats of "\t"

After this optimization, ~60% of Repeat calls will go through the fast path.

These are often used in padding of fixed-width terminal UI or
in the presentation of humanly readable text
(e.g., indentation made of spaces or tabs).

Optimize for this case by handling short repeated sequences of common literals.

Performance:

	name             old time/op    new time/op    delta
	RepeatSpaces-24    19.3ns ± 1%     5.0ns ± 1%   -74.27%  (p=0.000 n=8+9)

	name             old alloc/op   new alloc/op   delta
	RepeatSpaces-24     2.00B ± 0%     0.00B       -100.00%  (p=0.000 n=10+10)

	name             old allocs/op  new allocs/op  delta
	RepeatSpaces-24      1.00 ± 0%      0.00       -100.00%  (p=0.000 n=10+10)

Change-Id: Id1cafd0cc509e835c8241a626489eb206e0adc3c
Reviewed-on: https://go-review.googlesource.com/c/go/+/536615
Reviewed-by: Ian Lance Taylor <iant@google.com>
Reviewed-by: Emmanuel Odeke <emmanuel@orijtech.com>
Reviewed-by: Than McIntosh <thanm@google.com>
LUCI-TryBot-Result: Go LUCI <golang-scoped@luci-project-accounts.iam.gserviceaccount.com>

src/strings/strings.go

@@ -530,6 +530,27 @@ func Map(mapping func(rune) rune, s string) string {
 	return b.String()
 }
 
+// According to static analysis, spaces, dashes, zeros, equals, and tabs
+// are the most commonly repeated string literal,
+// often used for display on fixed-width terminal windows.
+// Pre-declare constants for these for O(1) repetition in the common-case.
+const (
+	repeatedSpaces = "" +
+		"                                                                " +
+		"                                                                "
+	repeatedDashes = "" +
+		"----------------------------------------------------------------" +
+		"----------------------------------------------------------------"
+	repeatedZeroes = "" +
+		"0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000"
+	repeatedEquals = "" +
+		"================================================================" +
+		"================================================================"
+	repeatedTabs = "" +
+		"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t" +
+		"\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t"
+)
+
 // Repeat returns a new string consisting of count copies of the string s.
 //
 // It panics if count is negative or if the result of (len(s) * count)
@@ -557,6 +578,23 @@ func Repeat(s string, count int) string {
 		return ""
 	}
 
+	// Optimize for commonly repeated strings of relatively short length.
+	switch s[0] {
+	case ' ', '-', '0', '=', '\t':
+		switch {
+		case n <= len(repeatedSpaces) && HasPrefix(repeatedSpaces, s):
+			return repeatedSpaces[:n]
+		case n <= len(repeatedDashes) && HasPrefix(repeatedDashes, s):
+			return repeatedDashes[:n]
+		case n <= len(repeatedZeroes) && HasPrefix(repeatedZeroes, s):
+			return repeatedZeroes[:n]
+		case n <= len(repeatedEquals) && HasPrefix(repeatedEquals, s):
+			return repeatedEquals[:n]
+		case n <= len(repeatedTabs) && HasPrefix(repeatedTabs, s):
+			return repeatedTabs[:n]
+		}
+	}
+
 	// Past a certain chunk size it is counterproductive to use
 	// larger chunks as the source of the write, as when the source
 	// is too large we are basically just thrashing the CPU D-cache.

src/strings/strings_test.go

@@ -1111,6 +1111,13 @@ func TestCaseConsistency(t *testing.T) {
 }
 
 var longString = "a" + string(make([]byte, 1<<16)) + "z"
+var longSpaces = func() string {
+	b := make([]byte, 200)
+	for i := range b {
+		b[i] = ' '
+	}
+	return string(b)
+}()
 
 var RepeatTests = []struct {
 	in, out string
@@ -1123,6 +1130,12 @@ var RepeatTests = []struct {
 	{"-", "-", 1},
 	{"-", "----------", 10},
 	{"abc ", "abc abc abc ", 3},
+	{" ", " ", 1},
+	{"--", "----", 2},
+	{"===", "======", 2},
+	{"000", "000000000", 3},
+	{"\t\t\t\t", "\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t", 4},
+	{" ", longSpaces, len(longSpaces)},
 	// Tests for results over the chunkLimit
 	{string(rune(0)), string(make([]byte, 1<<16)), 1 << 16},
 	{longString, longString + longString, 2},
@@ -1925,6 +1938,13 @@ func BenchmarkRepeatLarge(b *testing.B) {
 	}
 }
 
+func BenchmarkRepeatSpaces(b *testing.B) {
+	b.ReportAllocs()
+	for i := 0; i < b.N; i++ {
+		Repeat(" ", 2)
+	}
+}
+
 func BenchmarkIndexAnyASCII(b *testing.B) {
 	x := Repeat("#", 2048) // Never matches set
 	cs := "0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"