Small Buffer Optimization for string and friends

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 4/8/12 9:49 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 4/8/12 4:46 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> On Sunday, 8 April 2012 at 05:56:36 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Walter and I discussed today about using the small string optimization
>>> in string and other arrays of immutable small objects.
>>>
>>> On 64 bit machines, string occupies 16 bytes. We could use the first
>>> byte as discriminator, which means that all strings under 16 chars
>>> need no memory allocation at all.
>>
>> Don't use the first byte. Use the last byte.
>>
>> The last byte is the highest-order byte of the length. Limiting arrays
>> to 18.37 exabytes, as opposed to 18.45 exabytes, is a much nicer
>> limitation than making assumptions about the memory layout.
>
> Hehe. Good idea. On big endian machines the last byte is the ticket!

s/big/little/