string overhaul

Hi,

The representation of string objects by the interpreter
and by the compiler is different at the moment. For
the interpreter it's an object of builtin class STRING
and it maintains a pointer to a C-style (null-terminated)
string, the compiler stores strings in ubyte storages
(with a redundant \0 terminator to be compatible with C
functions).

It's ugly because the string data is being copied back
and forth each time the line of execution crosses the
boundary between interpreter and compiled code (it seems).
I would like to unify the representation and use storages
on both sides. I would introduce a new storage class
"character", say, which internally is equivalent to
ubyte (a "wide-character" class could be added later),
so that strings are still distinguishable from ubyte
storages. These character storages would be read-only,
but it's conceivable to allow some string functions to
work with ubyte storages as well, so that we effectively
would have mutable and immutable strings.

I haven't really thought that much about it and was
wondering if you would go about this differently.
Any thoughts?

Ralf


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