Connor Lane Smith <c...@lubutu.com> wrote:
> On 11 June 2016 at 07:34, <k...@shike2.com> wrote:
> > Strings are not idenpotent. In C strings, any pointer inside
> > of the string is a new string. Splitting strings is only
> > writing a 0. Splitting strings in Pascal strings require to
> > allocate a new chunk of memory and copy all the characters.
>
> This is fixed with slices (like in Go) though, as those are not,
>
> struct string { size_t size; char ar[]; };
>
> but,
>
> struct string { size_t size; char *ptr; };
>
> > Fixed maximum size. Pascal strings used a byte for the size,
> > and it meant that you could not have strings bigger than 256.
> > Of course you can increment this size to whatever you want,
> > but then you waste a lot of space.
>
> Clearly the problem with the above is that there is a word of
> overhead, instead of only a byte. Although note that since you can use
> `struct string s` in place of `char *s`, the pointer itself adds no
> additional overhead.
>
> > In both strings you can mess everything if you access out of the limits,
> > so they have the same problem.
>
> A size field does make it much more efficient to perform a bounds
> check though, which makes it easier to be absolutely sure (albeit with
> a performance hit); e.g.
>
> bool inbounds(struct string *s, size_t n) {
> return n < s->size;
> }
>
> vs.
>
> bool inbounds(char *s, size_t n) {
> for (size_t i = 0; i <= n; i++)
> if (s[i] == '\0')
> return false;
> return true;
> }
>
> So, so long as you're willing to take the performance and space hit,
> slices probably are safer. But since everything I've said above is
> also true for arrays, and C arrays don't have explicit length either,
> not very much is really gained. Ultimately, if you want that kind of
> assurance of safety at the cost of performance, you'd probably be
> better off using a memory-safe language instead of C.
>
> Although one unfortunate side effect of C strings is that as soon as
> you have to deal with the possibility of null bytes, everything gets a
> bit awkward.
>
> cls
