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Consider allowing caller-supplied buffer optimization for return values
Based on discussions in wasi-http/#8, we should consider a return-value optimization that avoids calling realloc
by instead allowing the core wasm caller to supply a (buffer, length) i32
pair as a param
. From my perspective, the main questions to consider are:
- For this to be useful, the optimization needs to apply not just for
list
/string
return types but alsoresult<string>
and other nested cases. But how far should this go? In the limit, it could apply to any use oflist
/string
that's not nested inside alist
, but that's probably too far. - If the return value is a dynamically-sized
list
/string
which needs more bytes than given, should it just fall back to callingrealloc
and can the caller then be expected to observe this case by noting that the returned pointer is not the same as the given one? - Is the speedup worth adding the special case?