closes#1175
The types `string_imp` and `string.iterator_imp` were supposed to be
marked private, but we cannot do it because we need to provide
`string_imp.mk`, `string_imp.cases_on`, `string.iterator_imp.mk` and
`string.iterator_imp.cases_on` in the VM since we use a different
internal representation. Note that marking them as private does not
work since users can still access `string_imp.cases_on` using
meta-programming.
So, we need better support for private declarations.
Missing feature, char literals do not support non ASCII values.
That is, in the current implementation, we cannot write 'α'.
This will be implemented in the future.
The VM native implementation does not behave correctly for huge
strings (i.e., strings with more than 4G characters).
The problem is that the current implementation relies on
```
size_t force_to_size_t(vm_obj const & o, size_t def)
```
We may also have overflow problems in the string.iterator implementation
code. This is not a big deal right now, since I doubt we will try
to process string with more than 2^32 characters.
@Kha the `core_lib` and tests seem to be working correctly, but
we need more tests.
We want to make sure string users do not depend on the string
implementation. This is the first step.
We need this refactoring *now* to make sure it will not be
super painful to address issue #1175
