Re: a better way to represent values (was: Re: ADD FILES and UPDATE)

[Jason Stover]

On Sun, Dec 07, 2008 at 09:48:56PM -0800, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> Ben Pfaff <address@hidden> writes:
> So now I want to propose a new way to do it.  Change the
> definition of "union value" from this:
> 
>     /* A numeric or short string value.
>        Multiple consecutive values represent a long string. */
>     union value
>       {
>         double f;
>         char s[MAX_SHORT_STRING];
>       };
> 
> to this:
> 
>     /* A numeric or string value.
>        Short string values are stored inline; long string values are
>        dynamically allocated. */
>     union value
>       {
>         double f;
>         char short_string[MAX_SHORT_STRING];
>         char *long_string;
>       };
> 
> and add some helper functions to make dealing with the two
> different forms of storage for strings a bit easier.
> 
> It's something of a big change, because there are a couple of
> hundred of references to the `s' member of union value in the
> source tree, and other related assumptions, but it will probably
> make a lot of other coding easier (as we can see from this
> thread).  I'm willing to do the conversion to this form myself
> (and I'll even try to update the developers guide to match).
> 
> Any comments?

Sounds good to me.