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Re: Wide string strategies
From: |
Ludovic Courtès |
Subject: |
Re: Wide string strategies |
Date: |
Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:57:26 +0200 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.90 (gnu/linux) |
Hi Mike,
Mike Gran <address@hidden> writes:
> On Thu, 2009-04-09 at 22:25 +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
>> All the POSIX interface needs fast access to ASCII strings. How about
>> something like:
>>
>> const char *layout = scm_i_ascii_symbol_chars (SCM_PACK (slayout));
>>
>> where `scm_i_ascii_symbol_chars ()' throws an exception if its argument
>> is a non-ASCII symbol?
>>
>> This would mean special-casing ASCII stringbufs so that we can treat
>> them as C strings.
>
> OK. Fast ASCII strings for the evaluator and for POSIX should be easy
> enough. Are there any other modules that definitely require fast
> strings?
None that I can think of.
Actually, for the file system interface, for instance, it's even
trickier: the encoding of file names usually isn't specified, but some
apps/libraries have their opinion on that, e.g., Glib
(http://library.gnome.org/devel/glib/unstable/glib-File-Utilities.html).
We should probably follow their lead here, but that's a secondary
problem anyway.
> Also, the interaction between strings and sockets needs more thought.
> If sendto and recvfrom are used for datagram transmission, as it
> suggests in their docstrings, then locale string conversion could be a
> bad idea. (And, these functions should also operate on u8vectors, but
> that's another issue.)
Agreed.
> To be more general, I know some apps depend on 8-bit strings and use
> them as storage of non-string binary data.
Yes, notably because of `sendto' et al. that take a string.
> I think SND falls into this
> category. I wonder if ultimately wide strings would have to be a
> run-time option that is off by default. But I am (choose your English
> idiom here) getting ahead of myself, or jumping the gun, or putting the
> cart before the horse.
I don't have any idea of how we could usefully handle that.
Eventually, it may be a good idea to deprecate `(sento "foobar")' in
favor of a variant that takes a bytevector or some such.
>> > +SCM_INTERNAL int scm_i_string_ref_eq_int (SCM str, size_t x, int c);
>>
>> Does it assume sizeof (int) >= 32 ?
>
> I suppose it does. But, I only used it to compare to the output of
> scm_getc which also returns an int.
I meant, is the intent that C contains a codepoint?
>> > +SCM_INTERNAL char *scm_i_string_to_write_sz (SCM str);
>> > +SCM_INTERNAL scm_t_uint8 *scm_i_string_to_u8sz (SCM str);
>> > +SCM_INTERNAL SCM scm_i_string_from_u8sz (const scm_t_uint8 *str);
>> > +SCM_INTERNAL const char *scm_i_string_to_failsafe_ascii_sz (SCM str);
>> > +SCM_INTERNAL const char *scm_i_symbol_to_failsafe_ascii_sz (SCM str);
>>
>> What does "sz" mean?
>
> Back in the day, "sz" was Microsoft-speak for the pointer to the first
> character of a null-terminated char string. By not knowing that, you
> have demonstrated that you remain unpolluted. ;-) I probably was trying
> to avoid writing "scm_i_string_to_string."
Ouch, I *think* I had seen it in some places but never knew where it
comes from. :-)
How about:
SCM scm_i_from_ascii_string (const scm_t_uint8 *str);
and similar?
>>
>> > +/* For ASCII strings, SUB can be used to represent an invalid
>> > + character. */
>> > +#define SCM_SUB ('\x1A')
>>
>> Why SUB? How about `SCM_I_SUB_CHAR', `SCM_I_INVALID_ASCII_CHAR' or
>> similar?
>
> If you're asking why SUB is set to 0x1A, the standard EMCA-48 says 0x1A
> should be used to indicate an invalid ASCII character.
I suspected that. Then `SCM_I_SUB_CHAR' may be a good name, perhaps
with a comment saying that this is the "official SUB character".
Thanks!
Ludo'.