@kha I've added
iterator.extract : iterator -> iterator -> option string
It returns `none` if the iterators are "incompatible".
If this function is inconvenient to use, we can change it and return the
empty string in these cases.
Given iterators `it1` and `it2`, if they are sharing the same string
object in memory, then the cost is O(pos(it2) - pos(it1)).
If not, we have an extra O(N) step where we check whether the strings
being iterated by it1 and it2 are equal (`N` is the size of the strings).
In most applications, I believe the iterators will share the string
object.
I didn't test the code much. BTW, I found an unrelated bug at
vm_string.cpp. So, I'm not very confident this code is rock solid.
26da50ab0e