Previous to this patch, a big-int, float or imag constant was interned
(made into a qstr) and then parsed at runtime to create an object each
time it was needed. This is wasteful in RAM and not efficient. Now,
these constants are parsed straight away in the parser and turned into
objects. This allows constants with large numbers of digits (so
addresses issue #1103) and takes us a step closer to #722.
This cleans up vstr so that it's a pure "variable buffer", and the user
can decide whether they need to add a terminating null byte. In most
places where vstr is used, the vstr did not need to be null terminated
and so this patch saves code size, a tiny bit of RAM, and makes vstr
usage more efficient. When null termination is needed it must be
done explicitly using vstr_null_terminate.
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.
Damien George
Paul Sokolovsky
stijn