Re: [boost] [container] static_string ?

On Sat, Sep 14, 2019 at 3:16 AM Andrey Semashev via Boost < boost@lists.boost.org> wrote:

On 2019-09-14 02:19, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

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On Fri, Sep 13, 2019, 3:58 PM Ion Gaztañaga via Boost <

boost@lists.boost.org>

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wrote:

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On 13/09/2019 14:43, Vinnie Falco via Boost wrote:

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On Fri, Sep 13, 2019 at 3:28 AM wrote:

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Why not use a static_vector<char> ?

static_vector is missing all of the string-oriented algorithms.

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There is a cost associated with maintaining the null termination of strings

Yeah, that's easily fixed. We can add the function fixed_capacity_string::c_str() which will put the terminator on and return a pointer, this way the mutating operations do not need to always leave the string in a null terminated state.

But then c_str() would not be "const noexcept".

Is that a big deal? I dont think so ...

It is. Obtaining C-style string without exceptions is important e.g. in exception::what(). It is also not uncommon to want to process strings in a non-throwing fashion involving C standard library, and it requires null-terminated strings. Also note that c_str() is an observer, which is supposed to not modify the string (IOW must be callable on a const string). In general, I see throwing and mutating c_str() as a major hinderance. C-style strings are still wide-spead, regardless of how much we love string_view.

Perhaps we could do as Vinnie said, but just name the function as `terminate()` instead of `c_str()`.