Regarding hex strings

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Sat, 20 Oct 2012 14:05:21 -0700
"H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx> 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).
> 

Can't you already just do this?:

 	auto blah = x"
 	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
 	";

I thought all string literals in D accepted embedded newlines?