Empty VS null array?

[Regan Heath]

On Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:02:35 +0100, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh at quickfur.ath.cx>  
wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 21, 2013 at 10:40:14AM +0100, Regan Heath wrote:
>> On Fri, 18 Oct 2013 17:36:28 +0100, Dicebot <public at dicebot.lv> wrote:
>>
>> >On Friday, 18 October 2013 at 15:42:56 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> >>That's bad API design, pure and simple. The function should e.g.
>> >>return the string including the line terminator, and only return
>> >>an empty (or null) string upon EOF.
>> >
>> >I'd say it should throw upon EOF as it is pretty high-level
>> >convenience function.
>>
>> I disagree.  Exceptions should never be used for flow control so the
>> rule is to throw on exceptional occurrences ONLY not on something
>> that you will ALWAYS eventually happen.
> [...]
>
> 	while (!file.eof) {
> 		auto line = file.readln(); // never throws
> 		...
> 	}

For a file this is implementable (without a buffer) but not for a socket  
or similar source/stream where a read MUST be performed to detect EOF.   
So, if you're implementing a line reader over multiple sources, you would  
need to buffer.  Not the end of the world, but definitely more complicated  
than just returning a null, no?

R

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