The more interesting question

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 16-05-2012 16:04, Gor Gyolchanyan wrote:
> On Wed, May 16, 2012 at 5:25 PM, Steven Schveighoffer
> <schveiguy at yahoo.com <mailto:schveiguy at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>
>     On Tue, 15 May 2012 18:31:26 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix at gmail.com
>     <mailto:deadalnix at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>         Le 15/05/2012 17:51, Christophe a écrit :
>
>             deadalnix , dans le message (digitalmars.D:167404), a écrit :
>
>                 This looks to me like a bad practice. C string and D
>                 string are
>                 different beasts, and we have toStringz .
>
>
>             C string and D string are different, but it's not a bad idea
>             to have
>             string *literals* that works for both C and D strings,
>             otherwise using
>             printf will lead to a bug each time the programmer forget
>             the trailing
>             \0.
>
>
>         Due to slicing, it is already unsafe to pass a D string to C
>         code. The main problem is array casting silently to pointers,
>         making the error easy to do.
>
>
>     How so?  strings are immutable, and literals are *truly* immutable.
>
>
>         Fixing the problem for literal isn't going to solve it at all.
>
>         The real solution is toStringz
>
>
>     toStringz can allocate a new block in order to ensure 0 gets added.
>       This is ludicrous!
>
>     You are trying to tell me that any time I want to call a C function
>     with a string literal, I have to first heap-allocate it, even though
>     I *know* it's safe.
>
>     I don't see a "problem" anywhere.  The current system is perfect for
>     what it needs to do.
>
>     -Steve
>
>
> Aside from the string problem the very existence of this debate exposes
> a fundamental flaw in the entire software engineering industry: heavy
> usage of ancient crap.
> If some library is so damned hard to refresh, then something's terribly
> wrong with it. It's about damned time ancient libraries are thrown away.
>
> --
> Bye,
> Gor Gyolchanyan.

I... don't think that's a very pragmatic view.

Yes, software sucks. Deal with it, etc.

-- 
Alex Rønne Petersen
alex at lycus.org
http://lycus.org