• Charles (21/21) Nov 14 2015 I have some binary files that I'm reading. At compile time it's
• anonymous (10/15) Nov 14 2015 Documentation [1] says "The input to this function MUST be validly

Charles <csmith.ku2013 gmail.com> writes:

I have some binary files that I'm reading. At compile time it's 
unknown what types I'm reading, and if they're strings, how it's 
encoded.

I'm doing something like this:

     Variant value;
     switch(type)
     {
         ...
         case Type.STRING:
             value = cast(dchar[])[];
             const(ubyte)[] buffer = raw[0 .. length];
             while (buffer.length > 0)
                 value ~= encodingScheme.decode(buffer);
             break;
         ...
     }

I know there's safeDecode, but I'm also fairly confident that all 
strings can decode safely, already, and if it isn't I'd want an 
exception thrown from it.

Is this correct usage? I guess I was a little surprised there was 
no decodeString that basically did this.

anonymous <anonymous example.com> writes:

On 14.11.2015 15:55, Charles wrote:
 I know there's safeDecode, but I'm also fairly confident that all
 strings can decode safely, already, and if it isn't I'd want an
 exception thrown from it.

Documentation [1] says "The input to this function MUST be validly 
encoded." It says nothing about an Exception being thrown when the input 
is invalid. I'd interpret that "MUST" as "there is no defined behavior 
for bad input".

So if there's a chance that the input is invalid, don't use plain `decode`.

 Is this correct usage? I guess I was a little surprised there was no
 decodeString that basically did this.

I can't find a simpler way to decode a whole string either. Would be a 
useful addition. Make it a range. Or if we're both just missing it, then 
it should probably be documented more prominently.