Biggest problems w/ D - strings

[C. Dunn]

BCS Wrote:

> Reply to Sean,
> 
> > C. Dunn wrote:
> > 
> >> I have a field of n chars stored on disk.  It holds a null-terminated
> >> string, padded with zeroes.  It is amazingly difficult to compare
> >> such a char[n] with some other char[] (which, by the dictates of D,
> >> may or may not be null-terminated).
> >> 
> > I'm not sure I understand.  Why bother computing string length in the
> > C fashion when D provides a .length property which holds this
> > information?
> > 
> > Sean
> > 
> 
> He might be using a D char[] as an oversized buffer for a c style string.

Exactly.  This is very common in the database world.  The disk record has a fixed size, so I have a struct which looks like this:

struct Data{
  int id;
  char[32] name;
  // ...
};

A C function produces this data.  D can accept the C struct with no problems.  'name' is just a static array.  But processing the name field in D is awkward.  'name.length' is 32, but 'strlen(name)' could be less (or infinity if the string is a full 32 characters sans zeroes, which is why I need strnlen()).