> but the function has to stop at the first char. Yes, and my example of an unrolled version of the early exit loop does stop at the first character, despite b

> but the function has to stop at the first char. Yes, and my example of an unrolled version of the early exit loop does stop at the first character, despite being unrolled. (That is an interesting example, though, and I think is a good proof that generating extra reads is not permitted.)