+s_expression *
+s_expression::read_expression(void *ctx, const char *&src)
+{
+ assert(src != NULL);
+
+ /* When we encounter a Symbol, we need to save a nul-terminated copy of
+ * the string. However, ralloc_strndup'ing every individual Symbol is
+ * extremely expensive. We could avoid this by simply overwriting the
+ * next character (guaranteed to be whitespace, parens, or semicolon) with
+ * a nul-byte. But overwriting non-whitespace would mess up parsing.
+ *
+ * So, just copy the whole buffer ahead of time. Walk both, leaving the
+ * original source string unmodified, and altering the copy to contain the
+ * necessary nul-bytes whenever we encounter a symbol.
+ */
+ char *symbol_buffer = ralloc_strdup(ctx, src);
+ return __read_expression(ctx, src, symbol_buffer);
+}
+