Thanks for the patch. I'm a bit reluctant to make changes like this unless there's a measurable performance benefit. The extra check in maybe_small_long does have a value in terms of readability and safety with respect to future maintenance, and I'd expect a competent compiler to inline maybe_small_long and elide the extra check (though I haven't looked at the assembly output to check that). So I think we shouldn't change this unless there's a clear benefit to doing so.