In comp.os.linux.advocacy, jbailo
<
[email protected]>
wrote
I've been working on my
gcc/Gtk+ application and
realized how much I need
pointers. String manipulation
in c is so beautiful and
elegant and fast -- its
way above all the dum-dum
'methods' of semi-script
languages such as c#.
'safe code' is not code in
the same way that Equal is
not sugar and diet soda is
not soda.
String manipulation in C/C++ is many things, but "elegant"
is not the first word that comes to mind.
std::string is livable, though, although it does not
have Java's immutability (unless one declares const std::string).
But it has the usual stuff: ordering, operator[], concatenation,
single- and multi-character search.
But delve down into char * and that's where the troubles start.
To be sure, char * allows many tricks; the code sequence:
char * p = "My name is Dave";
char * name = p + 11;
strcpy(name, "Alan");
printf("%s\n", p);
will probably print out the line "My name is Alan" on many systems,
though it's possible gcc's default options preclude such modifications.
(If such is the case, one will get a memory error of some sort.)
If one uses
strcpy(name, "Dilbert");
things get ugly quickly; the best case scenario is that the
first two characters of string following get clobbered with "rt".
The line printed out in that case might be something like:
My name is Dilbertt that's not important right now.
if one is optimistic enough. (If not, one gets fairly bad garbage.)
C# has unsafe pointer manipulation, if one really wants it. (I
don't know the details.) Java has it, too, if one uses JNI.
(Not many people do.
)
