string is rarely useful as a function argument

[Gor Gyolchanyan]

I agree, the string parameters are indeed irritating, but changing the
alias would bring much more pain, then it would relieve.

On Wed, Dec 28, 2011 at 4:06 PM, Peter Alexander
<peter.alexander.au at gmail.com> wrote:
> string is immutable(char)[]
>
> I rarely *ever* need an immutable string. What I usually need is
> const(char)[]. I'd say 99%+ of the time I need only a const string.
>
> This is quite irritating because "string" is the most convenient and
> intuitive thing to type. I often get into situations where I've written a
> function that takes a string, and then I can't call it because all I have is
> a char[]. I could copy the char[] into a new string, but that's expensive,
> and I'd rather I could just call the function.
>
> I think it's telling that most Phobos functions use 'const(char)[]' or 'in
> char[]' instead of 'string' for their arguments. The ones that use 'string'
> are usually using it unnecessarily and should be fixed to use const(char)[].
>
> In an ideal world I'd much prefer if string was an alias for const(char)[],
> but string literals were immutable(char)[]. It would require a little more
> effort when dealing with concurrency, but that's a price I would be willing
> to pay to make the string alias useful in function parameters.



-- 
Bye,
Gor Gyolchanyan.