Reuse capacity when possible in <BytesMut as Buf>::advance impl

[paolobarbolini]

While thinking about usage of BytesMut in my own code I've realized sometimes the following pattern (explained by the following pseudocode) is encountered:

let mut buf = BytesMut::with_capacity(8196);

loop {
    read_into_bufmut(&mut buf);

    if some_condition {
        // consume the data and then discard it
        let consumed = process_data(&buf);
        buf.advance(consumed);
        // in most cases the above `advance` ends-up consuming the entire length of `buf`
    } else {
        // consume the data as `Bytes`
        ship_data(buf.split().freeze());

        // (this is just to explain that `VecDeque` wouldn't be efficient here)
    }
}

In this particular example it would be more efficient to buf.clear() when consumed == buf.len(), instead of calling advance and eventually ending-up going through the allocation machinery.

This PR makes advance do it automatically for cases in which it's safe to do (which is why I didn't put it inside advance_unchecked). I'm not sure the Buf API allows it, the only thing I've found is #[must_use = "consider BytesMut::advance(len()) if you don't need the other half"] on BytesMut::split().

[Darksonn]

Would it make more sense to move this check to advance_unchecked?

[paolobarbolini]

Would it make more sense to move this check to advance_unchecked?

I'm not quite sure how to structure this because the thing with advance_unchecked is that it gets called by split_to and split_off. These functions expect advance_unchecked to actually advance the position, otherwise they would end up with the two instances of BytesMut having overlapping ranges.

[Darksonn]

The conflict with split_to and split_off is a good reason to not put it in advance_unchecked.

[braddunbar]

This is nice, thanks! I only have two small requests:

1. Can we use self.remaining() or self.len consistently in this function? Either one is fine with me, but it's not obvious that those values are synonymous.
2. Can we move this conditional before the assert! above? If cnt == self.len, we already know that cnt <= self.remaining() so we don't need to check it twice.

[paolobarbolini]

Good idea. Fixed!