ubyte[] to string with @nogc - different behaviors

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On 8/9/20 11:56 PM, Andy Balba wrote:
> On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 at 21:15:10 UTC, Luhrel wrote:
>> On Wednesday, 5 August 2020 at 20:28:22 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> But still, you are mallocing a block and throwing it away.
>>>
>>> And I realize, this wouldn't have worked anyway, as str is a string, 
>>> which means you can't overwrite the data.
>>>
>>> I think there is likely a better way to do what you are trying to do.
>>>
>>
>> Maybe with a ref parameter, but I think this will only move the 
>> problem outside the function.
>>
>>>
>>> ...
>>>
>>> What is the source of the incoming data? Will it be around by the 
>>> time you need to use this string? Can you just slice it without 
>>> copying? I'm not familiar with this code, so I don't know the 
>>> requirements.
>>>
>>> I would think:
>>>
>>> return cast(const(char)[])buffer[0 .. strnlen(buffer.ptr, 
>>> buffer.length))];
>>>
>>> or something like that.
>>>
>>
>> Will try that.
> 
> 
> What am I missing here ??
> Prior to reading this post, I would have tried
> 
>   ubyte[4] ss= [0x23, 0x24, 0x25, 0x26] ;    writeln ("ss ", ss);
> ... which outputs (as expected) ss  [35, 36, 37, 38]
> 
> And to convert ss to string, I would have tried :
>      string sss = cast(string) ss;           writeln ("sss ", sss);
> ... which outputs (as expected) sss  #$%&
> 
> 
> So, unless I'm missing something, isn't converting ubyte[] to string 
> super simple ?

There were other problems in this code example, and once you fix the 
underlying problems, it's no longer a conversion of ubyte[] to string.

But yes, conversion between arrays is pretty easy in D.

-Steve