Make Multihash a string instead of a []byte? about go-multihash HOT 6 OPEN

The reason i vote in favor of using a []byte is because once we move to using a string, anything that needs to copy or write out a multihash needs to make a copy of it first, and those can get expensive.

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I suppose that is true. It is really annoying that go does not have a concept of "const" as that can avoid most of these unnecessary copies, for example having to make a copy to pass a string into a function that expects a []byte even though there the function will not modify the data.

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And the argument can also be that more things end up needing it as a string that a []byte. @Stebalien what are your thoughts on this manor.

Changing the type of Multihash will be a simple but API breaking change. This perhaps should be done at the same time as ipfs/go-cid#3 (if we decide to do that) to minimize the pain.

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I see CIDs used as keys in maps all the time and using a string would help there a lot. Honestly, I'm not sure (we'd have to test it).

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@Stebalien I think you are you are confusing CID with mutlihashes, they are now two different things.

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Ah. Sorry, too many issues open (I care about this because it's one route to make CID's usable as map keys).

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