The primop `builtins.replaceStrings` currently always strictly evaluates the
replacement strings, however time and space are wasted for their computation
if the corresponding pattern do not occur in the input string. This commit
makes the evaluation of the replacement strings lazy by deferring their
evaluation to when the corresponding pattern are matched and memoize the result
for efficient retrieval on subsequent matches.
The testcases for replaceStrings was updated to check for lazy evaluation
of the replacements. A note was also added in the release notes to
document the behavior change.
Otherwise, running e.g.
nix-instantiate --eval -E --strict 'builtins.replaceStrings [""] ["X"] "abc"'
would just hang in an infinite loop.
Found by afl-fuzz.
First attempt of this was reverted in e2d71bd186 because it caused
another infinite loop, which is fixed now and a test added.
Otherwise, running e.g.
nix-instantiate --eval -E --strict 'builtins.replaceStrings [""] ["X"] "abc"'
would just hang in an infinite loop.
Found by afl-fuzz.