Regarding hex strings

[foobar]

On Saturday, 20 October 2012 at 21:03:20 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 20, 2012 at 04:39:28PM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> On Sat, 20 Oct 2012 14:59:27 +0200
>> "foobar" <foo at bar.com> wrote:
>> > On Saturday, 20 October 2012 at 10:51:25 UTC, Denis 
>> > Shelomovskij
>> > wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Maybe. Just an example of a real world code:
>> > >
>> > > Arrays:
>> > > https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/blob/fc45de1d089a1025df60ee2eea66ba27ee0bd99c/src/core/sys/windows/dll.d#L110
>> > >
>> > > vs
>> > >
>> > > Hex strings:
>> > > https://github.com/denis-sh/hooking/blob/69105a24d77fcb6eca701282a16dd5ec7311c077/tlsfixer/ntdll.d#L130
>> > >
>> > > By the way, current code isn't affected by the topic issue.
>> > 
>> > I personally find the former more readable but I guess there 
>> > would always be someone to disagree. As the say, YMMV.
>> 
>> Honestly, I can't imagine how anyone wouldn't find the latter 
>> vastly
>> more readable.
>
> If you want vastly human readable, you want heredoc hex syntax,
> something like this:
>
> 	ubyte[] = x"<<END
> 	32 2b 32 3d 34 2e 20 32 2a 32 3d 34 2e 20 32 5e
> 	32 3d 34 2e 20 54 68 65 72 65 66 6f 72 65 2c 20
> 	2b 2c 20 2a 2c 20 61 6e 64 20 5e 20 61 72 65 20
> 	74 68 65 20 73 61 6d 65 20 6f 70 65 72 61 74 69
> 	6f 6e 2e 0a 22 36 34 30 4b 20 6f 75 67 68 74 20
> 	74 6f 20 62 65 20 65 6e 6f 75 67 68 22 20 2d 2d
> 	20 42 69 6c 6c 20 47 2e 2c 20 31 39 38 34 2e 20
> 	22 54 68 65 20 49 6e 74 65 72 6e 65 74 20 69 73
> 	20 6e 6f 74 20 61 20 70 72 69 6d 61 72 79 20 67
> 	6f 61 6c 20 66 6f 72 20 50 43 20 75 73 61 67 65
> 	END";
>
> (I just made that syntax up, so the details are not final, but 
> you get
> the idea.) I would propose supporting this in D, but then D 
> already has
> way too many different ways of writing strings, some of 
> questionable
> utility, so I will refrain.
>
> Of course, the above syntax might actually be implementable 
> with a
> suitable mixin template that takes a compile-time string. Maybe 
> we
> should lobby for such a template to go into Phobos -- that might
> motivate people to fix CTFE in dmd so that it doesn't consume
> unreasonable amounts of memory when the size of CTFE input gets
> moderately large (see other recent thread on this topic).
>
>
> T

Yeah, I like this. I'd prefer brackets over quotes but it not a 
big dig as the qoutes in the above are not very noticeable. It 
should look distinct from textual strings.
As you said, this could/should be implemented as a template.

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