Packed Data Support in Haskell

https://arthi-chaud.github.io/posts/packed/

77•matt_d•8mo ago

Comments

nine_k•8mo ago

> Introducing the ‘packed’ data format, a binary format that allows using data as it is, without the need for a deserialisation step. A notable perk of this format is that traversals on packed trees is proven to be faster than on ‘unpacked’ trees: as the fields of data structures are inlines, there are no pointer jumps, thus making the most of the L1 cache.

That is, a "memory dump -> zero-copy memory read" of a subgraph of Haskell objects, allowing to pass such trees / subgraphs directly over a network. Slightly reminiscent of Cap'n Proto.

90s_dev•8mo ago

We are always reinventing wheels. If we didn't, they'd all still be made of wood.

Zolomon•8mo ago

They mention this in the article.

spockz•8mo ago

It reminds me more of flat buffers though. Does protobuf also have zero allocation (beyond initial ingestion) and no pointer jumps?

cstrahan•8mo ago

No, one example of why being variable sized integers.

See https://protobuf.dev/programming-guides/encoding/

carterschonwald•8mo ago

One thing that sometimes gets tricky in these things is handling Sub term sharing. I wonder how they implemented it.

tlb•8mo ago

> the serialised version of the data is usually bigger than its in-memory representation

I don’t think this is common. Perhaps for arrays of floats serialized as JSON or something. But I can’t think of a case where binary serialization is bigger. Data types like maps are necessarily larger in memory to support fast lookup and mutability.

nine_k•8mo ago

I suppose all self-describing formats, like protobuf, or thrift or, well, JSON are bigger than the efficient machine representation, because they carry the schema in every message, one way or another.

IsTom•8mo ago

If you use a lot of sharing in immutable data it can grow a lot when serializing. A simple pathological example would be a tree that has all left subtrees same as the right ones. It takes O(height) space in memory, but O(2^height) when serialized.

gitroom•8mo ago

honestly i wish more stuff worked this way - fewer hops in memory always makes me happy

lordleft•8mo ago

This was very well written. Excellent article!

NetOpWibby•8mo ago

Is this like MessagePack for Haskell?

The Economy Avoided a Recession in 2025

Just Fucking Use Markdown

Ask HN: What was the hardest bug you tracked down in 2025?

Encore: TypeScript Infrastructure Framework

HUML – YAML Without Ambiguity

Move Over, Genghis Khan. Many Other Men Left Genetic Legacies

Before This Physicist Studied the Stars, He Was One

Building Team. One 26MB Primitive. Air-Gapped. Deterministic. Runs Anywhere

Next Generation File System?

Finding Where to Compromise with LLM's

Claude Use Cases

Ask HN: What Disappointed You in 2025?

Velox – A <3kb reactive framework with O(1) updates (No VDOM)

Show HN: JSON Editors – Online JSON Editor and Developer Toolbox

Quadratrix of Hippias

Spreadsheet Simulators Are Unstoppable

Half-Life: Alyx's level designer prefers Black Mesa to original Half-Life (2020)

At The Limits of Design

My Three Strikes Rule for Blogging

Show HN: Jobswithgpt.com Semantic Job Search

Shut-In Society

Alloy: React for Codegen, like Stripe's internal framework

Macro Photography Highlights: The Best of 2025

We Saved Reboot

Tell HN: I am afraid AI will take my job at some point

Not Everything Should Be Easy

I documented a local 20B LLM perceiving its hardware state without data access

LLM Conversations Viewer

USB 3.0* Radio Frequency Interference Impact on 2.4 GHz Wireless Devices (2012) [pdf]

Installing Podman on OS X with Homebrew