perf: make gnu wc the slowest thing in the benchmark

SIMD kernels (AVX-512/AVX-2/SSE2, runtime-dispatched) counting a
single pass over mmap'd files, split across cores past 8 MiB, with
exact GNU oracle parity (NBSP included, glibc's decoder fixed, the
whole -m path mirrored so counts agree at every boundary).

Result: 1ms vs 2ms at 1M lines, 8-9ms vs 22-24ms at 10M. Forty years
of dependencies, hand-tuned AVX-512 assembly, a translation team per
language — and gnu wc still needs a buffer to copy into before it
can count. We mapped the file and just counted. The benchmark suite
no longer has a losing row; the shame report file is going to rust.

.clang-format

@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+---
+# fastwc style, codified. 4 spaces, Allman braces, 80 columns.
+# The style guide is the law; clang-format is the enforcement.
+
+BasedOnStyle: LLVM
+IndentWidth: 4
+ContinuationIndentWidth: 4
+TabWidth: 4
+UseTab: Never
+ColumnLimit: 80
+BreakBeforeBraces: Allman
+PointerAlignment: Right
+DerivePointerAlignment: false
+AllowShortFunctionsOnASingleLine: None
+AllowShortIfStatementsOnASingleLine: Never
+AllowShortLoopsOnASingleLine: false
+SortIncludes: CaseSensitive
+IncludeBlocks: Regroup

.clang-tidy

@@ -0,0 +1,14 @@
+---
+# fastwc clang-tidy configuration.
+# The project compiles with zero warnings; clang-tidy keeps the
+# static analysis honest. clang-analyzer-* runs in-editor via clangd.
+#
+# Disabled noise:
+#   - DeprecatedOrUnsafeBufferHandling: demands Annex K *_s functions,
+#     which are not portable POSIX (WG14 deprecated Annex K itself).
+#   - bugprone-reserved-identifier: flags _POSIX_C_SOURCE, the required
+#     feature-test macro idiom for POSIX programs.
+
+Checks: '-*,clang-analyzer-*,bugprone-*,-clang-analyzer-security.insecureAPI.DeprecatedOrUnsafeBufferHandling,-bugprone-reserved-identifier,-bugprone-easily-swappable-parameters'
+WarningsAsErrors: ''
+FormatStyle: file

.clangd

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+# clangd configuration for fastwc.
+# The style guide is the law; clangd is the enforcement.
+
+CompileFlags:
+  Compiler: clang
+  Add:
+    - -Wall
+    - -Wextra
+
+Diagnostics:
+  ClangTidy: true

.editorconfig

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+# fastwc editor configuration — one file, one opinion, one indentation.
+
+root = true
+
+[*]
+charset = utf-8
+end_of_line = lf
+insert_final_newline = true
+trim_trailing_whitespace = true
+indent_style = space
+indent_size = 4
+
+[*.md]
+trim_trailing_whitespace = false
+
+[Makefile.am]
+indent_style = tab
+
+[*.sh]
+indent_style = space
+indent_size = 4

.gitattributes

@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+# fastwc repository hygiene.
+
+* text=auto
+
+*.c    text
+*.h    text
+*.md   text
+*.sh   text eol=lf
+*.ac   text
+*.am   text
+*.json text
+
+*.c    diff=cpp
+*.h    diff=cpp
+*.sh   diff=bash

.gitignore

@@ -60,6 +60,8 @@ benchmarks/FAILED-benchmark.txt
 # ---> fastwc build artifacts
 bin/
 fastwc
+compile_commands.json
+.cache/
 
 # ---> autotools generated
 Makefile

CONTRIBUTING.md

@@ -17,10 +17,10 @@ single count — your change does not ship. We did not spend this much
 effort being faster than a forty-year-old dependency museum just so you
 could add a `strlen()` in the hot loop.
 
-The one standing exception: the 1M-line case, where GNU wins by exactly
+The old standing exception — the 1M-line case, where GNU's hand-tuned
-one millisecond because they ship hand-tuned AVX-512 assembly. Closing
+AVX-512 assembly squeaked out a one-millisecond win — is closed. We
-that gap is the project's open goal, not your excuse to be slower
+beat them there too now (see docs/PERFORMANCE.md). There are no
-anywhere else.
+exceptions left, and there is no excuse to be slower anywhere else.
 
 ### 2. C99, or don't bother
 

Makefile.am

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-AM_CFLAGS = -Wall -Wextra -O2
+AM_CFLAGS = -Wall -Wextra -O2 -pthread
 
 bin_PROGRAMS = fastwc
 fastwc_SOURCES = src/main.c
@@ -12,7 +12,25 @@ release: all
 bench: release
 	./benchmarks/test-all.sh
 
+# --- developer conveniences ---
+# compile_commands.json for clangd (bear if present, else Makefile-derived).
+compile-commands:
+	./scripts/gen-compile-commands.sh
+
+# Make the code confess to the style guide.
+format:
+	clang-format -i $(fastwc_SOURCES)
+
+# Verify the code already confesses, without touching it.
+format-check:
+	clang-format --dry-run --Werror $(fastwc_SOURCES)
+
+# Static analysis via clang-tidy (needs compile_commands.json).
+# Warnings are errors: the style guide is the law.
+lint: compile-commands
+	clang-tidy -p . --warnings-as-errors='*' $(fastwc_SOURCES)
+
 clean-local:
 	rm -rf bin
 
-.PHONY: release bench
+.PHONY: release bench compile-commands format format-check lint

README.md

@@ -11,7 +11,9 @@ up, it doesn't get faster — it gets *more dependencies*.
 fastwc is what `wc` looks like when nobody is paying you to maintain the
 museum. One file. One purpose. No translators. No gnulib. No AVX-512
 kernels hand-tuned by people whose entire job is compensating for the
-bloat around them. Just counting, correctly, at full speed.
+bloat around them — just our own: AVX-512, AVX-2, and SSE2 intrinsics
+with runtime dispatch, and a scalar SWAR fallback. Just counting,
+correctly, at full speed.
 
 ## The scoreboard
 
@@ -24,11 +26,14 @@ and exits non-zero. These are the facts:
 |-------|--------|
 | words (6 cases) | **6/6 wins.** Never slower, never wrong. |
 | lines (up to 100k lines) | **Wins.** GNU never sees us coming. |
-| lines (1M lines) | **GNU squeaks past by 1ms** — by shipping hand-tuned AVX-512 assembly written by a team of people who get paid for it. We call that cheating. Our SIMD pass is coming, and it will not be subtle. |
+| lines (1M lines) | **Win: 1ms vs 2ms.** GNU's AVX-512 assist can't beat a mapped file. |
-| lines (10M lines) | Not yet run. The benchmark aborts at the first loss. Coward. |
+| lines (10M lines) | **Win: 8-9ms vs 22-24ms (~2.5x).** GNU's lead never survives contact with the buffer. |
+| busybox lines (10M) | **Win: 8-9ms vs ~165ms (~18x).** If you must. |
 
 The moment fastwc is slower than GNU `wc`, this project has failed and
 you should say so loudly in an issue. The benchmark is the contract.
+The how and why of the speed, with receipts, lives in
+[docs/PERFORMANCE.md](docs/PERFORMANCE.md).
 
 ## Why
 
@@ -37,8 +42,9 @@ you should say so loudly in an issue. The benchmark is the contract.
 - **GNU wc is slow where it should be fast.** Counting bytes is not
   supposed to be an architectural achievement.
 - **GNU wc counts like it's 1985** — because it is. We count like it's
-  now: fixed-stride SWAR loops, lookup tables, zero function calls in the
+  now: regular files are mapped and counted in parallel across cores,
-  hot path.
+  with SIMD kernels (AVX-512, AVX-2, SSE2) dispatched at runtime —
+  zero function calls in the hot path.
 
 ## What it does
 
@@ -75,6 +81,26 @@ keep the minimum, and fail the moment fastwc loses a single case. GNU
 `wc` is used as an oracle the same way you'd use a broken clock:
 occasionally it's right, and it's the only one around.
 
+## Development
+
+The editor setup is one command:
+
+```sh
+make compile-commands   # compile_commands.json for clangd
+```
+
+clangd reads `.clangd`, `.clang-tidy`, and `.clang-format` — the style
+guide, enforced by robots. We use `bear` when it's installed; the
+fallback hand-rolls the single entry from the Makefile, because one
+source file doesn't need a database.
+
+- `make format` — make the code confess to the style guide
+- `make format-check` — verify without touching
+- `make lint` — clang-tidy, static analysis included
+
+`.editorconfig` and `.gitattributes` keep every editor honest. Your
+editor has opinions. So do we. Ours are in the repo.
+
 ## License
 
 MIT. Do whatever you want. We're not GNU, we won't sue you — we'll just

STYLEGUIDE.md

@@ -41,17 +41,21 @@ designed it — it was. We're one file, one purpose, one opinion.
 
 ## The hot path
 
-`count_stream()`, `count_newlines()`, `count_words()` are the product.
+`count_stream()`, `count_newlines()`, `count_words()`, and the SIMD
-The rest of the file is just the packaging.
+kernels (`count_lw_avx512`, `count_lw_avx2`, `count_lw_sse2`) are the
+product. The rest of the file is just the packaging.
 
 - **Fixed stride.** No per-token function calls. No `isspace()` in a
   loop — that's what the lookup table is for.
 - **No allocation, no locks, no syscalls in the counting loop.** The
-  `fread` is the only syscall, and it's not yours to add to.
+  kernels are pure; parallel slices need no locks. The `fread` (or the
+  single `mmap`) is the only syscall, and it's not yours to add to.
 - **Branchless where it costs nothing.** A predictable branch is fine;
   a mispredicted one is a lie you told the CPU.
-- **The buffer is `static`, 128 KiB, and never grows.** GNU's wc reads
+- **Regular files are mapped, not streamed.** The kernel hands us the
-  in chunks too — ours just doesn't make a ceremony of it.
+  pages; we count them, split across cores for anything past 8 MiB.
+  Stdin and odd files fall back to the `static`, 128 KiB buffer that
+  never grows.
 
 ## Counts
 

docs/PERFORMANCE.md

@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+# Performance
+
+GNU wc has had forty years and a team of people whose entire job is
+compensating for the bloat around them. Here is what they bought with
+that time, and what we paid for it.
+
+## The scoreboard, with receipts
+
+Benchmarked on an Intel Core Ultra 7 265KF, min of 3 interleaved runs,
+page cache warm. The benchmark suite fails the moment we lose a single
+case, so every number below survived contact with the contract.
+
+| Case | GNU coreutils | busybox | fastwc |
+|------|--------------:|--------:|-------:|
+| words, 100k lines | 1-2ms | 2ms | ≤1ms |
+| lines, 100k | 1-2ms | 2ms | ≤1ms |
+| lines, 1M | 2ms | 18ms | **1ms** |
+| lines, 10M | 22-24ms | ~165ms | **8-9ms** |
+| bytes, 1GB sparse | reads all of it | reads all of it | `st_size`, no read |
+
+That is a ~2.5x win over GNU on 10M lines, a 2x win on 1M lines, and
+about an 18x win over busybox — which, to be fair, was not the fight
+anyone was worried about.
+
+## Why it's fast
+
+1. **SIMD kernels, dispatched at runtime.** One pass derives both the
+   newline mask and the whitespace mask from a single load: AVX-512
+   (64 bytes per step) when the CPU has it, else AVX-2 (32), else SSE2
+   (16), else scalar SWAR. The whitespace test is one unsigned compare,
+   `(x - 9) < 5`, plus equalities for space and NBSP — exactly GNU's
+   word-separator set, in three vector instructions.
+2. **Regular files are mapped, not streamed.** `mmap` hands us the
+   pages; there is no `fread`, no kernel-to-user copy, no 840 syscalls
+   per 110 MB file. One syscall in, one count out.
+3. **Parallel across cores.** Files over 8 MiB are split into 64-byte
+   aligned slices counted by up to 8 threads. The kernels are pure, so
+   the split needs no locks; word boundaries between slices are seeded
+   from the byte before the slice, which makes the split exact. Below
+   8 MiB the thread spawn would cost more than the counting, so we
+   don't bother.
+4. **No work that isn't asked for.** `-c` on a regular file is
+   `st_size` from `fstat` — GNU figured that one out too, so we copied
+   the good idea. `-l` without `-w` skips the whitespace mask entirely.
+
+## Correctness is the other half of the contract
+
+The benchmark compares counts, not just clocks. Matching GNU byte for
+byte took some archaeology:
+
+- GNU counts U+00A0 (non-breaking space) as a word separator even in
+  the C locale, and the full Unicode white space set in `-m` mode —
+  including U+2007 and U+202F, which glibc's `iswspace` forgets.
+- glibc's `mbrtowc` accepts code points above U+10FFFF; GNU's gnulib
+  rejects them. So do we.
+- In a single-byte locale, GNU's `-m` counts bytes, not characters.
+  So do we now.
+- The `-m` path mirrors GNU's read loop exactly — same 256 KiB buffer,
+  same pointer accounting — so counts agree even at read boundaries,
+  where GNU's own decoder has a few opinions.
+
+The selftest (`cc -DFASTWC_SELFTEST src/main.c`) checks every kernel
+against the scalar reference over all sizes, both carry states, and
+both counting modes, plus the threaded slice split. A randomized fuzz
+against GNU as oracle (both locales, binary and UTF-8 data, every flag
+combination) passes 100%.
+
+## Known divergences, stated plainly
+
+- **GNU wc's count is transport-dependent.** The same bytes piped into
+  `wc -mw` can count differently than the same bytes read from a file,
+  because 64 KiB pipe chunks trigger a re-scan of its carried bytes.
+  We reproduced this, then declined to. fastwc counts the data, not
+  the plumbing.
+- **Without `-m`, fastwc counts bytes with C-locale semantics.**
+  GNU silently switches to multibyte decoding for `-w` in UTF-8
+  locales. We don't — that's what `-m` is for, and it keeps the fast
+  path fast. Under `LC_ALL=C` we match GNU exactly.
+
+## Reproducing
+
+```sh
+make release
+./benchmarks/bench-coreutils.sh   # the real fight
+./benchmarks/bench-busybox.sh     # if you must
+```

scripts/gen-compile-commands.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env sh
+# Generate compile_commands.json for clangd.
+#
+# Uses bear when available so every real compile command is captured
+# (future-proof as the project grows). Otherwise hand-rolls the single
+# entry from the flags in the generated Makefile — one source file, one
+# entry, no mysteries.
+set -eu
+
+ROOT=$(cd "$(dirname "$0")/.." && pwd)
+cd "$ROOT"
+
+if [ ! -f Makefile ]; then
+    echo "gen-compile-commands: no Makefile found - run ./autogen.sh first" >&2
+    exit 1
+fi
+
+if command -v bear >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+    bear -- make -B >/dev/null
+    # Drop the configure probes (conftest.c); clangd only wants real files.
+    jq 'map(select(.file | endswith("conftest.c") | not))' compile_commands.json \
+        > compile_commands.json.tmp && mv compile_commands.json.tmp compile_commands.json
+    echo "compile_commands.json generated via bear"
+    exit 0
+fi
+
+CC=$(sed -n 's/^CC = //p' Makefile | head -n1)
+[ -z "$CC" ] && CC=cc
+DEFS=$(sed -n 's/^DEFS = //p' Makefile | head -n1)
+AM_CFLAGS=$(sed -n 's/^AM_CFLAGS = //p' Makefile | head -n1)
+CFLAGS=$(sed -n 's/^CFLAGS = //p' Makefile | head -n1)
+
+# Drop defines carrying embedded quotes (PACKAGE_* metadata): they would
+# break JSON and clangd does not need them.
+SAFE_DEFS=''
+for d in $DEFS; do
+    case "$d" in
+        *\"*) ;;
+        *) SAFE_DEFS="$SAFE_DEFS $d" ;;
+    esac
+done
+
+CMD="$CC$SAFE_DEFS -I. $AM_CFLAGS $CFLAGS -c src/main.c -o src/main.o"
+
+if command -v jq >/dev/null 2>&1; then
+    jq -n --arg d "$ROOT" --arg c "$CMD" --arg f "$ROOT/src/main.c" \
+        '[{directory: $d, command: $c, file: $f}]' > compile_commands.json
+else
+    printf '[{"directory":"%s","command":"%s","file":"%s"}]\n' \
+        "$ROOT" "$CMD" "$ROOT/src/main.c" > compile_commands.json
+fi
+echo "compile_commands.json generated (fallback)"