Interesting Memory Optimization

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 16-03-2012 12:32, Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Friday, 16 March 2012 at 02:31:47 UTC, Xinok wrote:
>> On Friday, 16 March 2012 at 02:18:27 UTC, Kevin wrote:
>>> This is in no way D specific but say you have two constant strings.
>>>
>>> const char[] a = "1234567890";
>>> // and
>>> const char[] b = "67890";
>>>
>>> You could lay out the memory inside of one another. IE: if a.ptr = 1
>>> then b.ptr = 6. I'm not sure if this has been done and I don't think
>>> it would apply very often but it would be kinda cool.
>>>
>>> I thought of this because I wanted to pre-generate
>>> hex-representations of some numbers I realized I could use half the
>>> memory if I nested them. (At least I think it would be half).
>>>
>>> Kevin.
>>
>> I'm pretty sure this is called string pooling.
>
> My understanding is that string pooling just shares whole strings rather
> than combining suffixes.
>
> e.g.
> const char[] a = "fubar";
> const char[] b = "fubar"; // shared
> const char[] c = "bar"; // not shared at all
>
> Combining suffixes is obviously possible, but I'm not sure that string
> pooling implies suffix pooling.

I don't see any reason why c couldn't point to element number 3 of b, 
and have its length set to 3...

-- 
- Alex