Fragments were previously represented by `String` to avoid the cost of
interning (hashing and copying). This change modifies it to use uninterned
symbols, which does still have a copy overhead but it does not hash.
Initial tests shows a small performance decrease of about 15% and a small
memory increase of similar proportion. However, once I realized that I was
not clearing buffers from quick_xml events and implemented that change in a
previous commit, this change ended up being approximately on par with
`String`, despite the copying of some pretty large fragments.
YMMV, though, and perhaps on less powerful systems time may increase
slightly.
The upcoming XIR (XML IR) was originally going to support both owned strings
and symbols, but now we'll just use uninterned symbols; I can't rationalize
complicating the API at this time when it will provide an almost
imperceivable performance benefit. If ever that changes in the future,
that change will be entertained.
The end result is that the fate of a fragment's underlying memory is
determined by whatever is processing the data, _not_ by the API itself---the
API was previously forcing use of a String, whereas now it's up to the
caller to determine whether we want comparable interns. For fragments,
that's not likely ever to be the case, especially considering that the
representation will change so drastically in the future.
Mike Gerwitz
f97141f5c5