Validating UTF-8 binaries with Erlang

2015 06 Mar

Yesterday I pushed Websocket permessage-deflate to Cowboy master. I also pushed a change in the way the code validates UTF-8 data (required for text and close frames as per the spec).

When looking into why the permessage-deflate tests in autobahntestsuite were taking such a long time, I found that autobahn is using an adaptation of the algorithm named Flexible and Economical UTF-8 Decoder. This is the C99 implementation:

// Copyright (c) 2008-2009 Bjoern Hoehrmann <[email protected]>
// See http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de/utf-8/decoder/dfa/ for details.

#define UTF8_ACCEPT 0
#define UTF8_REJECT 1

static const uint8_t utf8d[] = {
  0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, // 00..1f
  0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, // 20..3f
  0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, // 40..5f
  0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0, // 60..7f
  1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9, // 80..9f
  7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7,7, // a0..bf
  8,8,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2, // c0..df
  0xa,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x3,0x4,0x3,0x3, // e0..ef
  0xb,0x6,0x6,0x6,0x5,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8,0x8, // f0..ff
  0x0,0x1,0x2,0x3,0x5,0x8,0x7,0x1,0x1,0x1,0x4,0x6,0x1,0x1,0x1,0x1, // s0..s0
  1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,0,1,0,1,1,1,1,1,1, // s1..s2
  1,2,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, // s3..s4
  1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,3,1,3,1,1,1,1,1,1, // s5..s6
  1,3,1,1,1,1,1,3,1,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,3,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1, // s7..s8
};

uint32_t inline
decode(uint32_t* state, uint32_t* codep, uint32_t byte) {
  uint32_t type = utf8d[byte];

  *codep = (*state != UTF8_ACCEPT) ?
    (byte & 0x3fu) | (*codep << 6) :
    (0xff >> type) & (byte);

  *state = utf8d[256 + *state*16 + type];
  return *state;
}

And this is the Erlang implementation I came up with:

%% This function returns 0 on success, 1 on error, and 2..8 on incomplete data.
validate_utf8(<<>>, State) -> State;
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 0) when C < 128 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 2) when C >= 128, C < 144 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 3) when C >= 128, C < 144 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 5) when C >= 128, C < 144 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 7) when C >= 128, C < 144 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 8) when C >= 128, C < 144 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 2) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 3) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 5) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 6) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 7) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 2) when C >= 160, C < 192 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 3) when C >= 160, C < 192 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 4) when C >= 160, C < 192 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 6) when C >= 160, C < 192 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 7) when C >= 160, C < 192 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 0) when C >= 194, C < 224 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< 224, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 4);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 0) when C >= 225, C < 237 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< 237, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 5);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 0) when C =:= 238; C =:= 239 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< 240, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 6);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 0) when C =:= 241; C =:= 242; C =:= 243 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 7);
validate_utf8(<< 244, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 8);
validate_utf8(_, _) -> 1.

Does it look similar to you? So how did we get there?

I started with a naive implementation of the original. First, we don't need the codepoint calculated and extracted for our validation function. We just want to know the data is valid, so we only need to calculate the next state. Then, the only thing we needed to be careful about was that tuples are 1-based, and that we need to stop processing the binary when we get the state 1 or when the binary is empty.

validate_utf8(<<>>, State) -> State;
validate_utf8(_, 1) -> 1;
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, State) ->
	validate_utf8(Rest, element(257 + State * 16 + element(1 + C, ?UTF8D), ?UTF8D)).

The macro ?UTF8D is the tuple equivalent of the C array in the original code.

Compared to our previous algorithm, this performed about the same. In some situations a little faster, in some a little slower. In other words, not good enough. But because this new algorithm allows us to avoid a binary concatenation this warranted looking further.

It was time to step into crazy land.

Erlang is very good at pattern matching, even more so than doing some arithmetic coupled by fetching elements from a tuple. So I decided I was going to write all possible clauses for all combinations of C and State. And by write I mean generate.

So I opened my Erlang shell, defined the variable D to be the tuple ?UTF8D with its 400 elements, and then ran the following expression (after a bit of trial and error):

16> file:write_file("out.txt",
	[io_lib:format("validate_utf8(<< ~p, Rest/bits >>, ~p) -> ~p;~n",
		[C, S, element(257 + S * 16 + element(1 + C, D), D)])
			|| C <- lists:seq(0,255), S <- lists:seq(0,8)]).
ok

The result is a 2304 lines long file, containing 2304 clauses. People who pay attention to what I say on Twitter will remember I said something around 3000 clauses, but that was just me not using the right number of states in my estimate.

There was a little more work to be done on this generated code that I did using regular expressions. We need to recurse when the resulting state is not 1. We also need to stop when the binary is empty, making it the 2305th clause.

Still, 2305 is a lot. But hey, the code did work, and faster than the previous implementation too! But hey, perhaps I could find a way to reduce its size.

Removing all the clauses that return 1 and putting a catch-all clause at the end instead reduced the number to about 500, and showed that many clauses were similar:

validate_utf8(<< 0, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 1, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 2, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 3, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 4, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 5, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 6, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 7, Rest/bits >>, 0) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);

But also:

validate_utf8(<< 157, Rest/bits >>, 2) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 157, Rest/bits >>, 3) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< 157, Rest/bits >>, 5) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< 157, Rest/bits >>, 6) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< 157, Rest/bits >>, 7) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< 158, Rest/bits >>, 2) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< 158, Rest/bits >>, 3) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< 158, Rest/bits >>, 5) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< 158, Rest/bits >>, 6) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< 158, Rest/bits >>, 7) -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);

Patterns, my favorites!

A little more time was spent to edit the 500 or so clauses into smaller equivalents, testing that performance was not impacted, and comitting the result.

The patterns above can be found here in the resulting function:

validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 0) when C < 128 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
...
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 2) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 0);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 3) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 5) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 2);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 6) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
validate_utf8(<< C, Rest/bits >>, 7) when C >= 144, C < 160 -> validate_utf8(Rest, 3);
...

I hope you enjoyed this post.