Null safe dereferences make handling null or missing values shorter.
Compare without:
```
if (ctx._source.missing != null && ctx._source.missing.foo != null) {
ctx._source.foo_length = ctx.source.missing.foo.length()
}
```
To with:
```
Integer length = ctx._source.missing?.foo?.length();
if (length != null) {
ctx._source.foo_length = length
}
```
Combining this with the as of yet unimplemented elvis operator allows
for very concise defaults for nulls:
```
ctx._source.foo_length = ctx._source.missing?.foo?.length() ?: 0;
```
Since you have to start somewhere, we started with null safe dereferenes.
Anyway, this is a feature borrowed from groovy. Groovy allows writing to
null values like:
```
def v = null
v?.field = 'cat'
```
And the writes are simply ignored. Painless doesn't support this at this
point because it'd be complex to implement and maybe not all that useful.
There is no runtime cost for this feature if it is not used. When it is
used we implement it fairly efficiently, adding a jump rather than a
temporary variable.
This should also work fairly well with doc values.
Adds support for indexing into lists and arrays with negative
indexes meaning "counting from the back". So for if
`x = ["cat", "dog", "chicken"]` then `x[-1] == "chicken"`.
This adds an extra branch to every array and list access but
some performance testing makes it look like the branch predictor
successfully predicts the branch every time so there isn't a
in execution time for this feature when the index is positive.
When the index is negative performance testing showed the runtime
is the same as writing `x[x.length - 1]`, again, presumably thanks
to the branch predictor.
Those performance metrics were calculated for lists and arrays but
`def`s get roughly the same treatment though instead of inlining
the test they need to make a invoke dynamic so we don't screw up
maps.
Closes#20870
Nik Everett
Robert Muir