On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:48 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I think we should continue to use uint8_t instead of char as the primary > way to represent a raw byte in WebKit. First, it's good to distinguish raw > data from C strings at the type system level, and second, the unpredictable > signedness of char is actively bad for byte-oriented processing. Another > library making a different choice doesn't overcome these reasons. > > To be fair, there hasn't been a convention in WebKit at all. uint8_t was chosen for SerializedScriptValue roughly two months ago, with specific IndexedDB support in mind: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=104354 - this usage is not widespread, and in fact the only consumer of this type is IndexedDB. > If there's particular libraries we want to use which have different > conventions, the adaptation should be done at the level of interfacing the > library. Changing WebKit's conventiones because of one optional dependency > does not make sense to me. > > Maybe more simply: Vector<uint8_t> was chosen very recently to replace String, in support of cleaning up IndexedDB code. IndexedDB would like to use Vector<char> now for further cleanup. Would you feel the same if we were switching from String to Vector<char>? On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:48 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <[email protected]> wrote: > > I think we should continue to use uint8_t instead of char as the primary > way to represent a raw byte in WebKit. First, it's good to distinguish raw > data from C strings at the type system level, and second, the unpredictable > signedness of char is actively bad for byte-oriented processing. Another > library making a different choice doesn't overcome these reasons. > > If there's particular libraries we want to use which have different > conventions, the adaptation should be done at the level of interfacing the > library. Changing WebKit's conventiones because of one optional dependency > does not make sense to me. > > Regards, > Maciej > > On Feb 6, 2013, at 4:35 PM, Alec Flett <[email protected]> wrote: > > ok, so something else has come up: SharedBuffer. SharedBuffer has an > adoptVector method that allows you to adopt Vector<char>... some of the > stuff I'm using that interacts with LevelDB is also dealing with > SharedBuffer, hence I've had to do some nasty casting from Vector<uint8_t> > to Vector<char> to allow me to call SharedBuffer.adoptVector() > > And again, we could tweak SharedBuffer to accept Vector<unsigned char> but > now we have two subsystems (LevelDB, and SharedBuffer) that seem to prefer > "char" as raw data. > > Personally outside of WebKit I tend to see more "char*" as the common > denominator for raw bytes. > > Further, there are no subsystems that actually depend on > SerializedScriptValue using uint8_t - it was just what we decided to use > when (ironically) we were hooking up IndexedDB to JSC, just a month or so > ago. > > So far Benjamin objected, and then seems to have rescinded. Glenn, do you > depend on SerializedScriptValue's current method signatures? > > Alec > > > On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 5:14 PM, Benjamin Poulain <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Alec Flett <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> Well, nobody is explicitly using LChar with SerializedScriptValue (maybe >>> it should, maybe that's another issue) but I guess this is why I'm asking >>> - I'm happy to just deal with this in IDB with some ugly reinterpret_casts >>> here and there (ok maybe not happy, but satisfied enough) if folks prefer >>> that. I don't personally find uint8_t to be any more intuitive than char, >>> but it sounds like some do. Nevermind... >>> >> >> Well, since you never use character types and only raw data, just ignore >> my comment. >> >> As far as I know, it is already common to use signed char for raw data >> (in the network stack for example). >> >> Benjamin >> > > > On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:06 PM, Alec Flett <[email protected]> wrote: > >> ok, so something else has come up: SharedBuffer. SharedBuffer has an >> adoptVector method that allows you to adopt Vector<char>... some of the >> stuff I'm using that interacts with LevelDB is also dealing with >> SharedBuffer, hence I've had to do some nasty casting from Vector<uint8_t> >> to Vector<char> to allow me to call SharedBuffer.adoptVector() >> >> And again, we could tweak SharedBuffer to accept Vector<unsigned char> >> but now we have two subsystems (LevelDB, and SharedBuffer) that seem to >> prefer "char" as raw data. >> >> Personally outside of WebKit I tend to see more "char*" as the common >> denominator for raw bytes. >> >> Further, there are no subsystems that actually depend on >> SerializedScriptValue using uint8_t - it was just what we decided to use >> when (ironically) we were hooking up IndexedDB to JSC, just a month or so >> ago. >> >> So far Benjamin objected, and then seems to have rescinded. Glenn, do you >> depend on SerializedScriptValue's current method signatures? >> >> Alec >> >> >> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 5:14 PM, Benjamin Poulain <[email protected]>wrote: >> >>> On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 4:54 PM, Alec Flett <[email protected]>wrote: >>> >>>> Well, nobody is explicitly using LChar with SerializedScriptValue >>>> (maybe it should, maybe that's another issue) but I guess this is why I'm >>>> asking - I'm happy to just deal with this in IDB with some ugly >>>> reinterpret_casts here and there (ok maybe not happy, but satisfied enough) >>>> if folks prefer that. I don't personally find uint8_t to be any more >>>> intuitive than char, but it sounds like some do. Nevermind... >>>> >>> >>> Well, since you never use character types and only raw data, just ignore >>> my comment. >>> >>> As far as I know, it is already common to use signed char for raw data >>> (in the network stack for example). >>> >>> Benjamin >>> >> >> > _______________________________________________ > webkit-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.webkit.org/mailman/listinfo/webkit-dev > > >
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