Fast Findings with SWAR and the FFI: The Good, the Bad, and the Inefficient

In this post, we compare three ways to find the first matching byte in an ASCII sequence—naive loops, SWAR (SIMD Within A Register) techniques, and the C memchr via Haskell’s FFI. You’ll learn how each performs in real benchmarks, where FFI can deliver 50× speedups, and why overhead can erase those gains in certain workloads.