Decode rewritten with shrinking-slice pattern (split_first/split_at)
instead of index arithmetic. Decode zeros 14% faster, decode nonzero
flips from 5% behind corncobs to 2% ahead, decode mixed closes to tied.
Encode zeros fast path moved before split_at — now tied with cobs
(was 6% behind). Code size reduced to 821B (was 869B).
Replaced criterion with iai-callgrind for deterministic instruction-count
benchmarks via Valgrind. Zero run-to-run variance. Expanded to 162
benchmarks across 9 sizes.
ucobs now wins or ties 16 of 18 benchmarks vs corncobs and cobs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>