The const buffers of the various implementations are now able to share the underlying memory.
At least until they are forced not to.
Const buffers will behave ust like normal buffers, except they start out as read-only.
When they are made writable, or sliced, then they will allocate their own independent copy of the memory.
That way, const buffers can have their contents changed, and behave just like normal buffers.
The const-ness is a pure optimisation that should not have any externally observable behaviour.
Motivation:
It's desirable to be able to access the contents of a Buf via an array or a ByteBuffer.
However, we would also like to have a unified API that works for both composite and non-composite buffers.
Even for nested composite buffers.
Modification:
Add a forEachReadable method, which uses internal iteration to process all buffer components.
The internal iteration allows us to hide any nesting of composite buffers.
The consumer in the internal iteration is presented with a Component object, which exposes the contents in various ways.
The data is exposed from the Component via methods, such that anything that is expensive to create, will not have to be paid for unless it is used.
This mechanism also let us avoid any allocation unnecessary allocation; the ByteBuffers and arrays will necessarily have to be allocated, but the consumer may or may not need allocation depending on how it's implemented, and the component objects do not need to be allocated, because the non-composite buffers can directly implement the Component interface.
Result:
It's now possible to access the contents of Buf instances as arrays or ByteBuffers, without having to copy the data.
