--- title: Porting Go's strings package to C | daily.dev description: A detailed walkthrough of porting Go's strings and bytes standard library packages to C, covering UTF-8 and bit manipulation dependencies, memory allocator... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/porting-go-s-strings-package-to-c-mioo3nkgg twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Porting Go's strings package to C | daily.dev og:description: A detailed walkthrough of porting Go's strings and bytes standard library packages to C, covering UTF-8 and bit manipulation dependencies, memory allocator... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/porting-go-s-strings-package-to-c-mioo3nkgg og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/MiOO3nKGg.png og:image:alt: Porting Go's strings package to C og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Porting Go's strings package to C **[Anton Zhiyanov](https://daily.dev/sources/antonz)** · 17 min read · 7 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A detailed walkthrough of porting Go's strings and bytes standard library packages to C, covering UTF-8 and bit manipulation dependencies, memory allocator design (inspired by Zig/Odin), buffer and builder types, and benchmarking infrastructure. The author introduces explicit allocators as a clean alternative to hidden malloc calls, ports Go's testing.B benchmarking in ~300 lines, and investigates two performance issues: a 20x slowdown in string search fixed by switching to memchr, and a strings.Builder regression traced to missing function inlining rather than the initially suspected return-type ABI issue. Final benchmarks show the C versions are 1.3–4x faster than Go for most operations, with Go winning only on Index/IndexByte due to hand-written assembly. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Porting Go's io package to C](https://daily.dev/posts/porting-go-s-io-package-to-c-paexeombj) · Anton Zhiyanov · 60 upvotes · 0 comments - [Going freestanding](https://daily.dev/posts/going-freestanding-jolnir5bq) · Anton Zhiyanov · 3 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#performance](https://daily.dev/tags/performance), [#golang](https://daily.dev/tags/golang), [#c](https://daily.dev/tags/c) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/porting-go-s-strings-package-to-c-mioo3nkgg) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Porting Go's strings package to C","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/porting-go-s-strings-package-to-c-mioo3nkgg","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/porting-go-s-strings-package-to-c-mioo3nkgg"},"datePublished":"2026-04-03T13:32:16.710Z","dateModified":"2026-04-03T13:32:45.256Z","description":"A detailed walkthrough of porting Go's strings and bytes standard library packages to C, covering UTF-8 and bit manipulation dependencies, memory allocator...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/11d8b3c589c1cce2c2b78656bb572e1e?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/11d8b3c589c1cce2c2b78656bb572e1e?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Anton Zhiyanov","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Anton Zhiyanov","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/29aa129ca24545f1a698d8a206ccc372","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/antonz"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/porting-go-s-strings-package-to-c-mioo3nkgg","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":7},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"performance,golang,c","timeRequired":"PT17M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Anton Zhiyanov","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/antonz"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Porting Go's strings package to C"}]} ```