Re: Null-terminated strings: the final analysis.

On 12/04/09 05:06, Tony wrote:
"Bartc"<bartc@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:CFusl.4007$Lc7.1359@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"Tony"<tony@xxxxxx> wrote in message
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Null terminated strings are premature optimization when considered in
modern times. Null-terminated strings are baggage and C suffers from
holding on to this obsolete implementation. (No question here, just
wondering now why a computer programming language should age like a
person?). Comments welcome of course.
This was discussed here recently, quite extensively too.

And they are not just a C thing, they were and are used ubiqitously
elsewhere, very successfully.

Your alternatives I recall would not fit easily into the low-level C
model.

"easily" is a subjective term, so your thought needs qualification to be
understood. I have a R&D design where a one-character string is one byte
(read no overhead),

What tells you it is one byte? Is it a special type ?
If so, er, isn't that called "char" in C?

small (Pascal) strings have one byte of overhead (the
length) and larger size strings have a few bytes more (but so what? they're
larger strings!). The usage though is via one abstraction.

FYI byte-counted strings aren't new and predate pascal - webearch for Hollerith string.

As criteria for string implementation analysis, I see: space efficiency,
time efficiency, practical usage (usage patterns are much different now than
then and the std implementation may be/may have impeding/impeded progress),

Some of the above may be true - C++ and Java use a form of byte-counted string. However note that C's model is likely to be the most space-efficient for non-trivial sized string, as the storage need be only one byte longer than the string, whereas byte-counted strings must be at least one byte longer.


--
Mark McIntyre

CLC FAQ <http://c-faq.com/>
CLC readme: <http://www.ungerhu.com/jxh/clc.welcome.txt>
.

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