Lot's of great information and pointers already. I will try from another
angle. :)
On 8/14/21 11:10 PM, rempas wrote:
> So when I'm doing something like the following: `string name = "John";`
> Then what's the actual type of the literal `"John"`?
As you say and as the code shows, there are two constructs in that line.
The right-hand side is a string literal. The left-hand side is a 'string'.
>> Strings are not 0 terminated in D. See "Data Type Compatibility" for
>> more information about this. However, string literals in D are 0
>> terminated.
The string literal is embedded into the compiled program as 5 bytes in
this case: 'J', 'o', 'h', 'n', '\0'. That's the right-hand side of your
code above.
'string' is an array in D and arrays are stored as the following pair:
size_t length; // The number of elements
T * ptr; // The pointer to the first element
(This is called a "fat pointer".)
So, if we assume that the literal 'John' was placed at memory location
0x1000, then the left-hand side of your code will satisfy the following
conditions:
assert(name.length == 4); // <-- NOT 5
assert(name.ptr == 0x1000);
The important part to note is how even though the string literal was
stored as 5 bytes but the string's length is 4.
As others said, when we add a character to a string, there is no '\0'
involved. Only the newly added char will the added.
Functions in D do not need the '\0' sentinel to know where the string
ends. The end is already known from the 'length' property.
Ali
