I did not read all the discussion in detail, but in my opinion
something that would be very useful in a library is
struct String{
void *ptr;
size_t _l;
enum :size_t {
MaskLen=((~cast(size_t)0)>>2)
}
enum :int {
BitsLen=8*size_t.sizeof-2
}
size_t len(){
return (_l & MaskLen);
}
int encodingId(){
return cast(int)(_l>>BitsLen);
}
}
plus stuff to simplify its creation from T[] arrays and getting T[]
arrays from it.
this type would them be used where one wants a string without caring
about its encoding, and without having to make all string accepting
functions templates.
As it was explained by others many string operations are rather generic.
*this* is what I would have expected from string, not an alias to
char[].
Fawzi
