Martin Wille wrote:
Joel de Guzman wrote:
Martin Wille wrote:
Catching up on a few things.
String handling is the thing Java got basically right, IMHO. Java distinguishes between a string class (immutable strings) and a string builder class. Typically, immutable string classes are memory efficient because they allow for sharing instances easily and time efficient because they allows for easy passing of the strings into and out of functions. String builders focus on modifying contents and intend to save memory and execution time and to avoid memory fragmentation by ...
The proposed super string could be a nice string _builder_, while the proposed functional/view interface could operate nicely on an immutable string class, std::string and on the string builder.
I mostly agree with your points, except that it lives in denial of the existence and experience of programmers with basic_string. As much as we have issues with the approach it's there and it's used heavily. I need to inter-operate with it. My approach is to build some additional capabilities onto it. Clearly that's not going to please everyone, but I think it's a reasonable approach.
.... Use-cases in favor of either approach can be made. Consequently, there's room for both suggested ways of dealing with character sequences and for the libraries supporting them. What we need in order to avoid confusion is to communicate clearly what the intent of the classes or views/functions is. So if we add the suggested super string then PLEASE do not name it 'string', but 'string_builder' or 'string_buffer' in order to emphasize on the in-place modification aspect in the name. Of course, there should be a complement to string_builder: immutable_string. (ISTR there was a proposal for that, already).
I'm not going to change the name because I'm not planning on changing the approach. It's a derivative of basic_string -- that makes it a string. In the next version there will be an experimental const_super_string which is an immutable version built on the proposed boost::const_string. My goal is to extend the standard library in a useful way, not pitch it out and rewrite it completely. Jeff