On Wed, 2008-08-20 at 17:59 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote: > Hi, > > On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Yu Feng <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Is there any particular reason that GLib doesn't provide a ref-counted > > string and a ref-counted array type? Lacking them in GLib makes the VALA > > language a real pain. > > > > I think you would have to explain more why this is an issue for vala, > at least for me (maybe everyone else already knows)
OK. Vala claims automatic memory management and a programming language on top of GLib. First, it is very difficult to manage a string without a reference count. The current vala implementation is to assume that strings are immutable, and to copy the strings almost everywhere where increasing the ref-count should be used. The copying mechanism produces workable code, but doesn't work in a efficient way. This is where it hurts. Secondly, vala doesn't introduce any additional dependency other than GLib, to implement it in VALA level, the only way is to embed it in the compiler. A compiler with embeded code to do a ref-counted string doesn't sound nice. This is why I think it should be done at GLib level. > > The first question is whether a solution goes in glib or in vala, > which kind of depends on what the specific problems are. > > Havoc Yu _______________________________________________ gtk-devel-list mailing list gtk-devel-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-devel-list