As per benchmark results below, these changes speed up encoding/decoding of
consensus objects a bit.
name old time/op new time/op delta
EncodeRLP/legacy-header-8 384ns ± 1% 331ns ± 3% -13.83% (p=0.000 n=7+8)
EncodeRLP/london-header-8 411ns ± 1% 359ns ± 2% -12.53% (p=0.000 n=8+8)
EncodeRLP/receipt-for-storage-8 251ns ± 0% 239ns ± 0% -4.97% (p=0.000 n=8+8)
EncodeRLP/receipt-full-8 319ns ± 0% 300ns ± 0% -5.89% (p=0.000 n=8+7)
EncodeRLP/legacy-transaction-8 389ns ± 1% 387ns ± 1% ~ (p=0.099 n=8+8)
EncodeRLP/access-transaction-8 607ns ± 0% 581ns ± 0% -4.26% (p=0.000 n=8+8)
EncodeRLP/1559-transaction-8 627ns ± 0% 606ns ± 1% -3.44% (p=0.000 n=8+8)
DecodeRLP/legacy-header-8 831ns ± 1% 813ns ± 1% -2.20% (p=0.000 n=8+8)
DecodeRLP/london-header-8 824ns ± 0% 804ns ± 1% -2.44% (p=0.000 n=8+7)
* rlp: pass length to byteArrayBytes
This makes it possible to inline byteArrayBytes. For arrays, the length is known
at encoder construction time, so the call to v.Len() can be avoided.
* rlp: avoid IsNil for pointer encoding
It's actually cheaper to use Elem first, because it performs less checks
on the value. If the pointer was nil, the result of Elem is 'invalid'.
* rlp: minor optimizations for slice/array encoding
For empty slices/arrays, we can avoid storing a list header entry in the
encoder buffer. Also avoid doing the tail check at encoding time because
it is already known at encoder construction time.
