Small patch to speed up $display by reusing an std::string

[veripoolbot]

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Author Name: R. Diez
Original Redmine Issue: 574 from https://www.veripool.org
Original Date: 2012-11-02
Original Assignee: R. Diez

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Small patch to speed up $display by reusing an std::string, please see the attached patch.

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Original Redmine Comment
Author Name: Wilson Snyder (@wsnyder)
Original Date: 2012-11-03T12:30:17Z

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Makes sense. I think it would be almost as efficient and safer to make a "VL_THREAD static string outbuf" inside each function rather than sharing one, see similar examples in verilated.cpp.

I think it looks ok as VL_SFORMATF_NX returns a unique string each time, but please check that sharing the buffer won't cause problems with things like "$sformat("foo%sfoo",$sformat("bar%sbar",var))". (Note in this example you need a var, not a constant string or verilator will constant propagate it into a single constant.)

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Original Redmine Comment
Author Name: R. Diez
Original Date: 2012-11-03T17:45:56Z

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Makes sense. I think it would be almost as efficient and
safer to make a "VL_THREAD static string outbuf" inside
each function rather than sharing one, see similar examples in verilated.cpp.

OK. These are very small, trivial changes, can you do that without a new patch?

I think it looks ok as VL_SFORMATF_NX returns a unique string each time,
but please check that sharing the buffer won't cause problems with things like
"$sformat("foo%sfoo",$sformat("bar%sbar",var))".

The changes are just a speed optimisation, and I haven't got time at the moment to experiment further. If VL_SFORMATF_NX poses questions, can you just leave that routine out? You can add a comment to that routine about such a possible optimisation together with the problematic example above. The next time I come around, I'll look into it.

Thanks,
rdiez

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Original Redmine Comment
Author Name: Wilson Snyder (@wsnyder)
Original Date: 2012-11-04T00:12:49Z

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Turns out in gcc VL_THREAD isn't legal on complex types, so used a macro to make it static only when not threaded, those that thread will have reduced performance for now.

Fixed in git towards 3.842.

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Original Redmine Comment
Author Name: Wilson Snyder (@wsnyder)
Original Date: 2012-11-04T00:25:14Z

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In 3.842.