Oh, well, looks like atoms are not possible

[Chris Marrin <chris@...>]

What a pain.

I did a test to see if I could get strings to behave like atoms. I tried 
a short, 3 char string and a long, 35 char string. From the code it 
looks like strings above and below 32 chars are handled differently. I 
assume that is what everyone here has been talking about when saying 
"short strings".

I did 3 tests. I loaded the strings, got back their char* pointers, then 
 put them into the registry and popped them. Then I forced a GC and 
loaded the strings in the registry onto the stack and checked their 
addresses. They matched. Then I loaded those same strings again with new 
pushstring() calls, and they matched. Then I executed these two 
functions, in turn:

function _getabc()
    return "abc"
end
function _getlongString()
    return "AVeryVeryVeryVeryVeryVeryLongString"
end

Looking at the returned string values, the first one matched and the 
second one didn't.

That means that, at best, I would be able to cache only short strings. 
That might not be too bad. But I wish there were a way to guarantee that 
AT LEAST any string under 32 characters can be cached in this way. It 
seems like Lua internally uses this characteristic of short strings. So 
it seems like this should be a reasonable guarantee to bring out to the 
C interface. Any idea if this will be done in the future?

--
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"As a general rule,don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell"'