The idea is to eventually get rid of protected state in StringBase. To
do this, we first need to remove all references to m_data and
m_short_string from String.
This starts separating memory management of string data and string
utilities like `String::formatted`. This would also allow to reuse the
same storage in `DeprecatedString` in the future.
UTF8Decoder was already converting invalid data into replacement
characters while converting, so we know for sure we have valid UTF-8
by the time conversion is finished.
This patch adds a new StringBuilder::to_string_without_validation()
and uses it to make UTF8Decoder avoid half the work it was doing.
Instead of using a StringBuilder, add a String::repeated(String, N)
overload that takes advantage of knowing it's already all UTF-8.
This makes the following microbenchmark go 4x faster:
"foo".repeat(100_000_000)
And for single character strings, we can even go 10x faster:
"x".repeat(100_000_000)
This commit un-deprecates DeprecatedString, and repurposes it as a byte
string.
As the null state has already been removed, there are no other
particularly hairy blockers in repurposing this type as a byte string
(what it _really_ is).
This commit is auto-generated:
$ xs=$(ack -l \bDeprecatedString\b\|deprecated_string AK Userland \
Meta Ports Ladybird Tests Kernel)
$ perl -pie 's/\bDeprecatedString\b/ByteString/g;
s/deprecated_string/byte_string/g' $xs
$ clang-format --style=file -i \
$(git diff --name-only | grep \.cpp\|\.h)
$ gn format $(git ls-files '*.gn' '*.gni')
In cases where we know a string literal will fit in the short string
storage, we can do so at compile time without needing to handle error
propagation. If the provided string literal is too long, a compilation
error will be emitted due to the failed VERIFY statement being a non-
constant expression.
This implements a FlyString that will de-duplicate String instances. The
FlyString will store the raw encoded data of the String instance: If the
String is a short string, FlyString holds the String::ShortString bytes;
otherwise FlyString holds a pointer to the Detail::StringData.
FlyString itself does not know about String's storage or how to refcount
its Detail::StringData. It defers to String to implement these details.
These instances were detected by searching for files that include
AK/Memory.h, but don't match the regex:
\\b(fast_u32_copy|fast_u32_fill|secure_zero|timing_safe_compare)\\b
This regex is pessimistic, so there might be more files that don't
actually use any memory function.
In theory, one might use LibCPP to detect things like this
automatically, but let's do this one step after another.
The previous moved-from state was the null string. This violates both
our invariant that String is never null, and also the C++ contract that
the moved-from state must be valid but unspecified. The empty short
string state is of course valid, so it satisfies both invariants. It
also allows us to remove any extra checks for the null state.
The reason this change is made is primarily because swap() requires
moved-from objects to be reassignable (C++ allows this). Because the
move assignment of String would not check the null state, it crashed
trying to increment the data reference count (nullptr signals a
non-short string). This meant that e.g. quick_sort'ing String would
crash immediately.
DeprecatedString (formerly String) has been with us since the start,
and it has served us well. However, it has a number of shortcomings
that I'd like to address.
Some of these issues are hard if not impossible to solve incrementally
inside of DeprecatedString, so instead of doing that, let's build a new
String class and then incrementally move over to it instead.
Problems in DeprecatedString:
- It assumes string allocation never fails. This makes it impossible
to use in allocation-sensitive contexts, and is the reason we had to
ban DeprecatedString from the kernel entirely.
- The awkward null state. DeprecatedString can be null. It's different
from the empty state, although null strings are considered empty.
All code is immediately nicer when using Optional<DeprecatedString>
but DeprecatedString came before Optional, which is how we ended up
like this.
- The encoding of the underlying data is ambiguous. For the most part,
we use it as if it's always UTF-8, but there have been cases where
we pass around strings in other encodings (e.g ISO8859-1)
- operator[] and length() are used to iterate over DeprecatedString one
byte at a time. This is done all over the codebase, and will *not*
give the right results unless the string is all ASCII.
How we solve these issues in the new String:
- Functions that may allocate now return ErrorOr<String> so that ENOMEM
errors can be passed to the caller.
- String has no null state. Use Optional<String> when needed.
- String is always UTF-8. This is validated when constructing a String.
We may need to add a bypass for this in the future, for cases where
you have a known-good string, but for now: validate all the things!
- There is no operator[] or length(). You can get the underlying data
with bytes(), but for iterating over code points, you should be using
an UTF-8 iterator.
Furthermore, it has two nifty new features:
- String implements a small string optimization (SSO) for strings that
can fit entirely within a pointer. This means up to 3 bytes on 32-bit
platforms, and 7 bytes on 64-bit platforms. Such small strings will
not be heap-allocated.
- String can create substrings without making a deep copy of the
substring. Instead, the superstring gets +1 refcount from the
substring, and it acts like a view into the superstring. To make
substrings like this, use the substring_with_shared_superstring() API.
One caveat:
- String does not guarantee that the underlying data is null-terminated
like DeprecatedString does today. While this was nifty in a handful of
places where we were calling C functions, it did stand in the way of
shared-superstring substrings.
We have a new, improved string type coming up in AK (OOM aware, no null
state), and while it's going to use UTF-8, the name UTF8String is a
mouthful - so let's free up the String name by renaming the existing
class.
Making the old one have an annoying name will hopefully also help with
quick adoption :^)
These are guarded with #ifndef KERNEL, since doubles (and floats) are
not allowed in KERNEL mode.
In StringUtils there is convert_to_floating_point which does have a
template parameter incase you have a templated type.
