Re: [h5md-user] Strings again / parallel issue

[Peter Colberg]

Hi Felix,

On Thu, Feb 06, 2014 at 10:11:36AM +0100, Felix Höfling wrote:
> Saying Goodbye to mandating VL String is a good idea! But why forcing the
> string to be of fixed-length now? Why don't we let the user decide,
> depending on the situation? I think we had good reasons earlier to use
> variable length strings. And we might soon encounter a case where
> variable-length strings would be preferred.

With variable-length strings, the caller needs to pass or receive an
array with pointers to character strings; with fixed-length strings,
an array of characters. The former is negligibly easier than the
latter in C, but significantly harder in Fortran (and requires
iso_c_binding); thus the preference for fixed-length strings.

Peter