We want to make Items reentrant, so calculation can be distributed between different processors. This will be very useful for UNIONs, but possible use cases will not be really limited only to UNIONs.

Currently there are the following obstacles to make Items reentrant:

1. Item::null_value

The member Item::null_value. It should be removed. Value getter methods should be rewritten to return the value together with the null flag. There are two options here:

• a. Remove all non-reentrant data type specific methods: val_int(), val_bool(), val_real() and replace them by a single method {code:cpp}bool Item::val(Value *);{code} See MDEV-19259
• b. Modify the existing data type specific methods to return null flag together with the value itself. Possible options, using double as an example:{code:cpp}
  virtual double val_real_null(bool *null_value_arg)= 0; // Add a pointer to null flag
  virtual bool get_double(double *to)= 0; // return NULL flag, pass the destination by pointer
  virtual Double_null to_double_null()= 0; // return a structure {double,bool}
  {code}
  See MDEV-23738 for more details.

2. Temporary values (e.g. Item::str_value, Item_func_xxx::tmp_value)

Many Item descendants, and especially Item_func*, store various intermediate String values inside themselves, as members.

Some examples:

class Item_func_ord :public Item_int_func

{

  String value;

public:

  ...

};

class Item_func_md5 :public Item_str_ascii\_func

{

  String tmp\_value;

public:

 ...

}

class Item_func_date_format :public Item_str\_func

\{

  int fixed\_length;

  const bool is_time_format;

  String value;

public:

  ...

\}

All these members should be removed.

The reasonably short values should be moved on stack,
e.g. using the StringBuffer<size> template.

The long values should be moved to THD, as a sort of String pool.

The method

String *Item::val\_str(String *to);

should be turned to:

String *Item::val\_str(String *to, String\_pool \*pool) const;

Or, possibly, even to:

String *Item::val_str(String_pool *pool) const;

so the final String value can also be allocated on String_pool.

String_pool can have a constructor accepting a String object:

String\_pool(String \*str);

to keep polymorphism, so the old code still works:

String buffer, \*tmp= item\->val\_str(&buffer);

The above call will be convenient for the cases when we don't need to reuse the memory allocated by intermediate values during Item->val_str() calculation.