Devel::Pointer has a deref() function, which allows you to get you hands upon the address without literally stringifying it. What you loose, is the type and blessedness information. If you can get that all in a single call rather than messing around with parsing the stringified representation that would just make things simpler.

The other side is if it is possible to recover that information from the SV pointed at, rather than having to store it and related it back later when you unsmash it, that would make life a great deal easier and remove another level of storage requirement and lookup.

With both sides, plus the appropriate refcount manipulations, you have the possibility to retain a single 32-bit value as a handle to anything. That makes the whole compact array idea almost practical.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.
Silence betokens consent.
Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco.

In reply to Re^8: Techniques On Saving Memory by BrowserUk
in thread Techniques On Saving Memory by Limbic~Region

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