An EvaluationContext carried the variable bindings, the function library, the
namespace bindings, and the budget by value. Re-focusing the context onto each
node of a node-set (focused(on:position:size:), called once per node when a
predicate is applied) copied all three dictionaries every time, even though
none of them changes as the focus moves.
Bundle the focus-independent state in an Environment reference type. The
context now holds the node, position, size, and an Environment reference;
re-focusing copies the three integers and shares the environment by reference
instead of copying and reference-counting three dictionaries. The values and
behavior are identical.
Measured xpath ~16% faster on the 20k-item generated corpus via a same-state
A/B (count unchanged at 10000). The full XPath suite, the Apache Xalan XSLT
gold-output corpus, and the WASM build stay green.
Mihaela Mihaljevic
68f6680a66