• Regan Heath <regan netmail.co.nz> May 26 2007
• Sam Phillips <dont-spam-sambeau mac.com> May 26 2007

Regan Heath <regan netmail.co.nz> writes:

Walter Bright Wrote:
 	alias const(char)[] cstring;
 
 Why cstring? Because 'string' appears as both a module name and a common 
 variable name. cstring also implies wstring for wchar strings, and 
 dstring for dchars.


I like it all, except the alias.  I would prefer 'string'.  'cstring' implies
C's string to me, for example I often alias std.string.toStringz to cstr or
CSTR.  I think wstring and dstring are ok, basically I'd like:

char, string
wchar, wstring
dchar, dstring

Is it really a problem that std.string is a module name?

I don't reckon it's a very common variable name, for example:

1. I wouldn't go to the trouble of typing 'string' for a throw away variable
when I could use 'p', 's', or 'str'.  

2. Likewise for a more long lived variable I would use something more
descriptive i.e. nameString, ageString, promptString, boundaryString, ...

Slightly OT:  I think once we have const etc and 'string' working as desired
then for many applications there will be no need for a additional String class.

Note that I said 'many applications' above;  I think that those applications
that make heavy use of many different text encodings and/or languages may still
want a 'String' (or 'Text') class.

This class would provide the extra functionality that aren't inherent in
string, wstring, dstring, things like:

1. leveraging iconv (or similar) to handle various encodings.

2. choosing the best internal format string, wstring, dstring for the text
based on the language used.

3. slicing on character boundaries regardless of internal format.

.. and probably other things I haven't thought of here.

Regan

Sam Phillips <dont-spam-sambeau mac.com> writes:

Regan Heath Wrote:
 I like it all, except the alias.  I would prefer 'string'.  'cstring' implies
C's string to me, for example I often alias std.string.toStringz to cstr or
CSTR.  I think wstring and dstring are ok, basically I'd like:
 
 char, string
 wchar, wstring
 dchar, dstring
 
 Is it really a problem that std.string is a module name?


</lurk>
Concur
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