First Impressions

[Anders F Björklund]

Kevin Bealer wrote:

> If we say 'char[]' then users don't know it's a string until they read 
> the 'why D arrays are great' page (which they should read, but...)
> 
> If we say 'string' then we hide the fact that [] can be applied and that 
> other array-like operations can work.

Which could be a *good* thing, since it would stop users from hurting
themselves by pretending that the D strings are arrays of characters ?

And when they have read up that they are "arrays of Unicode code units",
they should be OK with interpreting the "string" alias as char[] arrays.

> For instance, from a Java perspective:
> 
> char[] : Users don't know that it's "String"; users see it as low-level.
>          Some will try to write things like 'find()' by hand since they
>          will figure arrays are low level and not expect this to exist.
> 
> string : Users will think it's immutable, special; they will ask "how do
>          I get one of the characters out of a string", "how do I convert
>          string to char[]?", and other things that would be obvious
>          without the alias.

I think the best answer would be: "to get a char[] from the string,
use the std.utf.toUTF8 function", since this also works even if you
redeclare the "string" alias to be something else - like wchar_t[] ?

Earlier* I suggested adding the alias utf8_t for "char", just like
we have int8_t for "byte", but I wouldn't rename the actual D types.
Just a little std.stdutf module with some aliases, if ever needed...

string std.string.toString( )
utf8_t[]  std.utf.toUTF8( )
utf16_t[] std.utf.toUTF16( )
utf32_t[] std.utf.toUTF32( )

--anders

* digitalmars.D/11821, 2004-10-15