Riza

Lua string.pack/unpack implementation in C#, made primarily to assist the creation of private servers for Unity games with XLua backends.

Only x64 systems. I have no respect towards nuint.

Please use MessagePack instead of Riza, unless you are using it purposefully(e.g. for XLua private servers). This project's intention and purpose is clear.

Major differences between string.pack and LuaPack

LuaPack.Pack does not care if the format option is signed or not, while Lua will raise an Integer Overflow error if the value indeed overflows:

print(string.pack(">b", 254)); -- input:1: bad argument #2 to 'pack' (integer overflow)

LuaPack does not and will most likely never support the ! and X options.
LuaPack does not support j, J, n and z options yet.
LuaPack allows you to use byte counts higher than 16 in i/I/s/c[n] options, unlike Lua.
All overloads of LuaPack.Unpack will NOT fail if the data feed ends prematurely.

Usage

Sample Class

WARNING: You cannot use struct with LuaPack directly because __makeref and imaginary constraints don't make my life any easier!

public class SampleClass {
  [RizaField(0)]
  public int SomeInt;
  [RizaField(1)]
  public string SomeString;
  [RizaField(2)]
  public ulong SomeUlong;
  public ulong NotDeserializedField;
  [RizaField(3)]
  public byte SomeByte;
}

Packing

Use LuaPack.Pack* just like you would use string.pack in Lua.

For this piece of code:

print(string.pack(">I4B<iLs", 1, 2, 3, 4, "abc"));

The direct LuaPack representation would be:

Console.WriteLine(LuaPack.PackToString(">I4B<iLs", 1, 2, 3, 4, "abc"));

Additionally, Riza supports packing entire objects:

Console.WriteLine(LuaPack.PackToString(">I4c8Lb", new SampleClass() {
  SomeInt = 58,
  SomeString = "abcdefgh",
  SomeUlong = 0xDEADC0DECAFEBABE,
  SomeByte = 210
}));

Unpacking

The primitive way, which is faster, but really annoying to work with, is this:

int SomeInt;
string SomeString;
ulong SomeUlong;
byte SomeByte;

List<object> Unpacked = LuaPack.Unpack(">I4c8Lb", SomePackedData);
SomeInt = (int) (ulong) Unpacked[0]; // You have to cast to ulong first... So bad.
SomeString = (string) Unpacked[1];
SomeUlong = (ulong) Unpacked[2];
SomeByte = (byte) Unpacked[3];

And the better way(but slower, since it uses reflection) is this:

SampleClass Sample = LuaPack.Unpack<SampleClass>(">I4c8Lb", SomePackedData); // T has a constraint of new()
SampleClass SameSample = LuaPack.Unpack<SampleClass>(">I4c8Lb", SomePackedData, new SampleClass());

Performance Benchmarks

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
OS: tiny10 22H2
class SmallDummy (S):>fB<i4s>c12l<hd - 8 fields.
class LargeDummy (L): >bfB<i4Hs>c12I3l<Lhd - 12 fields.
class ExtraLargeDummy (XL): >bfB<i4Hs>c12I3l>Lhd<bfB>i4Hs<c12I3l>Lhd - 24 fields.

Pack vs Pack

Method	Mean	Error	StdDev
ManualPackS	177.6 ns	3.38 ns	3.32 ns
ManualPackL	233.1 ns	2.72 ns	2.41 ns
ManualPackXL	427.7 ns	4.55 ns	3.80 ns
SerialPackS	5,390.1 ns	29.54 ns	23.06 ns
SerialPackL	7,996.1 ns	66.19 ns	55.27 ns
SerialPackXL	15,757.9 ns	164.70 ns	128.58 ns

Unpack vs Unpack

Method	Mean	Error	StdDev
ManualUnpackS	177.1 ns	2.50 ns	2.09 ns
ManualUnpackL	238.9 ns	2.58 ns	2.29 ns
ManualUnpackXL	453.6 ns	9.10 ns	15.70 ns
SerialUnpackS	5,506.1 ns	23.41 ns	21.90 ns
SerialUnpackL	7,949.0 ns	110.08 ns	97.58 ns
SerialUnpackXL	16,144.7 ns	261.28 ns	231.62 ns

Endianness

Big Endian is fully supported when packing and unpacking, thus using the > flag is fully supported and will work; but options i/I/s/c[n] will not work correctly under a Big Endian memory layout (e.g. under Solaris).

The = flag is always defaulted to Little Endian.

Alluseri / Riza