On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 16:55:49 -0400, Timon Gehr <[email protected]> wrote:
On 06/27/2012 10:22 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jun 2012 15:20:26 -0400, Timon Gehr <[email protected]>
wrote:
There is no reason for anyone to be confused about this endlessly. It
is simple to understand. Furthermore, think about the implications of a
library-defined string type: it just introduces the problem of what the
type of built-in string literals should be. This would cause endless
pain with type deduction, ifti, string mixins, ... A library-defined
string type cannot be a full string type. Pretending that it can has no
value.
Default type of the literal should be the library type.
Then it is not a library type, but a built-in type. Are you planning to
inject a dependency on Phobos into the compiler?
No, druntime, and include minimal utf support. We do the same thing with
AssociativeArray.
If you want immutable(char)[], use "abc".codeunits or equivalent.
I really don't want to type .codeunits, but I want to use
immutable(char)[] everywhere. This 'library type' is just an interface
change that makes writing nice and efficient code a kludge.
When most string functions take strings, why would you want to use
immutable(char)[] everywhere?
Of course, it should by default work as a zero-terminated char * for C
compatibility.
The current situation is not simple to understand.
It is simple, even if not immediately obvious. It does not have to be
immediately obvious without explanation. It needs to be convenient.
Try sorting an array of ascii characters.
Generic code that accepts arrays has to special-case narrow-width
strings if you plan to
use phobos with them in some cases. That is a horrible situation.
Generic code accepts ranges, not arrays. All necessary (or maybe
unnecessary, I don't know) special casing is already done for you in
Phobos. The _only_ thing that is problematic is the inconsistent
'foreach' behaviour.
Plenty of generic code specializes on arrays.
alias immutable(char)[] string is just fine.
That is technically fine, but if phobos wants to treat immutable(char)[]
as something other than an array, it is not fine.
-Steve
Phobos does not treat immutable(char)[] as something other than an
array. It does not treat all arrays uniformly though.
It certainly does. An array by definition is a random-access range. It
does not treat strings as random access ranges.
-Steve
