[perl #128226] Remove the requirement for null termination on PVs

# New Ticket Created by  Father Chrysostomos 
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# <URL: https://rt.perl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=128226 >


If we could remove the requirement that PVs in SVs have a terminating null, we could make things like substr() faster (by having it use the same string buffer as the full original string).

Since it is not uncommon in XS code to pass SvPV(...) to a system function that expects null termination, we would probably have to make SvPV allocate a new string with the null, and introduce a new version of SvPV (SvPV_nn_ok(sv,len)?) that may return unterminated strings and assumes the caller will depend solely on the len value.

Of course, any code that passes SvPVX to a C function will probably break.  I don’t know whether there is any way to avoid that.  A survey of SvPVX uses on CPAN would be time-consuming, but helpful.

-- 

Father Chrysostomos

• [perl #128226] Remove the requirement for null termination on PVs by Father Chrysostomos
• Re: [perl #128226] Remove the requirement for null termination onPVs by Dave Mitchell
• [perl #128226] Remove the requirement for null termination on PVs by Father Chrysostomos via RT