Rename std.string.toStringz?

[Jonathan M Davis]

Okay. I have an open pull request whose main goal is to rename various string 
and character functions so that they're properly camelcased (as has been 
discussed previous in this group): https://github.com/D-Programming-
Language/phobos/pull/101

All in all, I think that the renaming in there is fairly obvious and non-
controversial. However, we have the problem of std.string.toStringz. toStringz 
isn't properly camelcased (at least, _I_ would definitely argue that it 
isn't). Currently (in that pull request), I have it renamed to toStringZ (with 
the old version still around and scheduled to be deprecated, so no code would 
break immediately if it were merged in). But some have said that they consider 
toStringz to be properly camelcased (apparently they view stringz as a special 
word indicating a zero-terminated string). Another suggestion was to rename it 
to toCString (which is arguably much more obvious for newbies). In addition to 
that, we have std.utf.toUTF16z, which matches the naming scheme that toStringz 
has, so if we rename toStringz, we should probably rename toUTF16z as well (to 
toWCString?). Certainly, there's no consensus on what to do with the name of 
toStringz.

Now, toStringz is probably one of the most heavily used string functions in 
Phobos. If we rename it, a _lot_ of code is going to have to be changed. So, 
if we rename it, we need to give it a name which most people would consider 
better than toStringz and worth the consistency that we gain with regards to 
the naming of functions in Phobos. So, the question is, should we

1. Keep toStringz as it is (as well as toUTF16z) and either consider stringz 
to be some sort of word unique to the D community or just admit that we're not 
going to camelcase it because it would break too much code to do so.

2. Just camelcase it properly and rename it to toStringZ (and probably rename 
toUTF16z to toUTF16Z). Code will have to be changed, but the function is still 
immediately recognizable to long time D programmers.

3. Rename it to toCString (probably renaming toUTF16z to something like 
toWCString), so it's then more recognizable to newbies, but it'll take some 
getting used to for everyone else (and of course require lots of code to be 
changed).

4. Rename toStringz to something else which is properly camelcased.

I don't like leaving toStringz as it is because of its casing, but I also 
don't want to cause code breakage without general agreement on the replacement 
name. It's just too important of a function to change the name of willy-nilly. 
So, I'm looking to see what everyone else thinks.

Thoughts? Opinions?

- Jonathan M Davis