• Tom <tom nospam.com> Mar 12 2007
• Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> Mar 12 2007
• Tom <tom nospam.com> Mar 12 2007
• Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> Mar 13 2007

Tom <tom nospam.com> writes:

A question,

shouldn't be documented on the 'std.string.toString(char*)', that the 
d-string returned shares the same buffer as the input c-string?

I've spent some (too much) time debugging to find out why the heck all 
my strings were messing up... now I know.

Mentioning this on the docs could have been of so much help, it's not 
that obvious!

Regards,
--
Tom;

Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> writes:

Tom wrote:
 A question,
 
 shouldn't be documented on the 'std.string.toString(char*)', that the 
 d-string returned shares the same buffer as the input c-string?
 
 I've spent some (too much) time debugging to find out why the heck all 
 my strings were messing up... now I know.
 
 Mentioning this on the docs could have been of so much help, it's not 
 that obvious!


I think it's pretty obvious if you read the first paragraph of 
http://www.digitalmars.com/d/phobos/std_string.html, and consider that a 
char* c-string is also a 'string' as described in that bit of text. It's 
not modified, so a slice of the original is returned (as a D char[]).

Remember: don't just read the function description, the module 
description may contain information that applies to all (or a lot of) 
the functions in a module.

Tom <tom nospam.com> writes:

Frits van Bommel escribió:
 Tom wrote:
 A question,

 shouldn't be documented on the 'std.string.toString(char*)', that the 
 d-string returned shares the same buffer as the input c-string?

 I've spent some (too much) time debugging to find out why the heck all 
 my strings were messing up... now I know.

 Mentioning this on the docs could have been of so much help, it's not 
 that obvious!


 I think it's pretty obvious if you read the first paragraph of 
 http://www.digitalmars.com/d/phobos/std_string.html, and consider that a 
 char* c-string is also a 'string' as described in that bit of text. It's 
 not modified, so a slice of the original is returned (as a D char[]).


It wasn't so obvious for me. I knew the COW thing for char[] but didn't 
guess that a char* was considered a string in this matters.

 Remember: don't just read the function description, the module 
 description may contain information that applies to all (or a lot of) 
 the functions in a module.


Uhmm, I know :). Not reading wasn't the issue. It was disregarding the 
fact that in D, a char* is also considered a string.

Regards,
--
Tom;

Frits van Bommel <fvbommel REMwOVExCAPSs.nl> writes:

Tom wrote:
 Frits van Bommel escribió:
 Tom wrote:
 shouldn't be documented on the 'std.string.toString(char*)', that the 
 d-string returned shares the same buffer as the input c-string?






 I think it's pretty obvious if you read the first paragraph of 
 http://www.digitalmars.com/d/phobos/std_string.html, and consider that 
 a char* c-string is also a 'string' as described in that bit of text. 
 It's not modified, so a slice of the original is returned (as a D 
 char[]).


 It wasn't so obvious for me. I knew the COW thing for char[] but didn't 
 guess that a char* was considered a string in this matters.


 Not reading wasn't the issue. It was disregarding the 
 fact that in D, a char* is also considered a string.


Well, char* isn't typically considered a string in D, but in this 
case[1] it's treated as one[2].
Also, you clearly referred to it as a (c-)string in your original post ;).


[1]: And AFAIK only in this case, outside of *.c.* modules. Well, 
perhaps you could also count the return value of toStringz...

[2]: The description of toString(char*):  "Convert C-style 0 terminated 
_string_ s to char[] string." (emphasis added)