Language specification says that variables are captured by reference.
And that is what gc compiler does. However, in lots of cases it is
possible to capture variables by value under the hood without
affecting visible behavior of programs. For example, consider
the following typical pattern:
func (o *Obj) requestMany(urls []string) []Result {
wg := new(sync.WaitGroup)
wg.Add(len(urls))
res := make([]Result, len(urls))
for i := range urls {
i := i
go func() {
res[i] = o.requestOne(urls[i])
wg.Done()
}()
}
wg.Wait()
return res
}
Currently o, wg, res, and i are captured by reference causing 3+len(urls)
allocations (e.g. PPARAM o is promoted to PPARAMREF and moved to heap).
But all of them can be captured by value without changing behavior.
This change implements simple strategy for capturing by value:
if a captured variable is not addrtaken and never assigned to,
then it is captured by value (it is effectively const).
This simple strategy turned out to be very effective:
~80% of all captures in std lib are turned into value captures.
The remaining 20% are mostly in defers and non-escaping closures,
that is, they do not cause allocations anyway.