Re: [Vala] reference management.

[jamie <jamiemcc blueyonder co uk>]

On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 18:17 +0000, jamie wrote:

> I would personally use GString (with ref counting patch to glib) as the
> basic string type in vala as that this can be managed efficiently
> without copying strings via default strong refs. Its also a lot faster
> for string concatenation as it allocates extra memory for potential
> string growth in chunks (using gslice I believe)
>
> For C interfacing, a cString type should be used with the compiler
> automatically converting  from GString to cString just like Delphi does
> with its strings.

also the way delphi ref counts strings is to use copy-on-write so a
string is only ever copied when its written (and never when its
assigned) - this makes ref counted strings highly efficient and removes
the need for the "weak" optimization with strings.

(on copying the ref count of the string being copied is decremented)

In addition, isn't "weak" the same as const?

jamie.