With this patch str/bytes construction is streamlined. Always use a
vstr to build a str/bytes object. If the size is known beforehand then
use vstr_init_len to allocate only required memory. Otherwise use
vstr_init and the vstr will grow as needed. Then use
mp_obj_new_str_from_vstr to create a str/bytes object using the vstr
memory.
Saves code ROM: 68 bytes on stmhal, 108 bytes on bare-arm, and 336 bytes
on unix x64.
mp_obj_int_get_truncated is used as a "fast path" int accessor that
doesn't check for overflow and returns the int truncated to the machine
word size, ie mp_int_t.
Use mp_obj_int_get_truncated to fix struct.pack when packing maximum word
sized values.
Addresses issues #779 and #998.
Before, sizeof() could be applied to a structure field only if that field
was itself a structure. Now it can be applied to PTR and ARRAY fields too.
It's not possible to apply it to scalar fields though, because as soon as
scalar field (int or float) is dereferenced, its value is converted into
Python int/float value, and all original type info is lost. Moreover, we
allow sizeof of type definitions too, and there int is used to represent
(scalar) types. So, we have ambiguity what int may be - either dereferenced
scalar structure field, or encoded scalar type. So, rather throw an error
if user tries to apply sizeof() to int.