On Tuesday, 24 September 2019 at 00:29:05 UTC, Vladimir Panteleev
wrote:
On Monday, 23 September 2019 at 23:22:14 UTC, Brett wrote:
I guess you are probably right... I was thinking that it would
compare up to a null terminator. Seems kinda buggy... maybe
the compiler needs to give a warning? After all, compared a
fixed size array with a dynamic array then will almost always
fail since it is unlikely the sizes will match...
...rather than failing silently.
It might still be useful for generic code, so a compiler
warning would probably not be suitable. However, it might be a
good idea for a linter such as Dscanner, which, unlike the
compiler, sees types as they are written in the code, not as
they are calculated through metaprogramming.
The only issue is that buggy dynamic code can result if someone
compares the two and it will fail silently. It could be quite
complex bug that destroys the space station. Warnings never hurt
and with the ability to disable specific ones one can bypass such
issues. (disable then enable)
But if it behaves in a non-standard way based on some somewhat
arbitrary limitation(fixed arrays are only arbitrary because of
the limitations of computers) then it's going to bit people and
the more D is used the more people that will get bitten.
If I convert a static array to a string, I want the "string"
portion of the array. Strings are special, they are meant to have
specific representation. Strings do not have 0 characters in them
normally.
So upon conversion, to!string would detect this and either error
out or stop the conversion at that point. The only time one would
want to retain junk values is for displaying bytes, but then one
should just convert to a byte or char array.
But of course those people that have be using to!string to
convert arbitrary bytes will have their code broken... but I
imagine few have done this(there really is no point).
The same thing should happen when converting anything to a
string, it should detect malformed strings and either error or
terminate(if zero terminated).
This makes for a more consistent ecosystem.
if, for example, I stick null terminated strings in a buffer then
to!string will automatically recover them(the first one, assuming
one each time).
There is probably no win-win situation though and so I suggest
just a warning when converting arrays to strings.
