replace int with size_t in stream methods #4706

Thus the read(...) and write(...) methods of all stream classes now have identical parameter lists. This will bring these classes one step closer to a common interface.

Looks good to me, although before merging it must be verified that we're not passing in numbers that are potentially negative anywhere. After this change that would result in an integer overflow or undefined behavior.

@laanwj I took a look and it seems that these methods are only ever used by various Serialize/Unserialize functions and methods. In some of them, the size parameter is acquired through sizeof operator. In other, the size is calculated in a trivial manner, or at least trivial anough to warrant usage of size_t in every other streamlike object's T.write(..) or T.read(..) method.

Ok thanks for checking.

I'd prefer not use anything with virtual methods, though. Serialization is performance-critical, and having vtables (which are essentially function pointers) are known to make it easier to write exploits so may be worse from a security viewpoint.

Yes, I really want to avoid introducing runtime lookups for serialization. The effective amount of code is huge, and it only really works so well because the compiler can optimize pretty much everything away.

Of course, I haven't benchmarked, and numbers may convince me otherwise.

Untested ACK

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ut ACK

tested ACK