Performance issue with COW strings?

[Paolo Carlini]

Hi Dan,

> So, I'd like to try benchmarking my app with & without COX strings.
> Is there a patch handy for libstdc++
> to replace COW strings with deep-copy strings?
>
> For the purpose of this test, I don't care about
> compatibility, so it's ok if I can't mix code
> compiled with this patch with code compiled with
> a stock libstdc++.

Excellent! We badly need this kind of hard data. Well, I could prepare a
simple patch just disabling refererence-counting, would be simple.
However, since you don't care about compatibility, I would ask you to
wait just a couple of weeks: after some overdue branch maintainance, I
will add to v7-branch a simple alternate base class for basic_string,
avoiding ref-counting, selectable at configure time. Carrying out
comparisons will be very easy and meaningful, because the full set of
"utility" functions will remain the same, only the low-level bits will
be different in the two configurations.

Thanks,
Paolo.