rhg: in path_encode, be a bit more conservative about memory usage Use [shrink_to_fit] to match the previous behavior more closely, and potentially save (a tiny bit) of memory. FWIW, I suspect this is unnecessary, but this whole MR is about simplifying things while preserving any existing optimizations.

rhg: small refactor: stop using a magical constant "+ 1" Instead, directly do what the "+ 1" was supposed to achive: call hash_encode.

rhg: in path_encode, use Vec directly instead of VecDest No need to have a trivial wrapper over the type. There's nothing confusing about vec.write_bytes(...), after all.