Re: [Vala] Initializing strings to be used by FileStream::gets

[Daniel Thompson <daniel07 redfelineninja org uk>]

On Sun, 2007-09-09 at 20:48 +0200, Jürg Billeter wrote:
> > I've therefore been trying to figure out how best to grow a string to be
> > large enough to store the input from fgets. The best I have so far
> > developed without modifying the bindings is:
> >
> > var str = "%*d".printf(256, 0);
> >
> > This at least allows 256 to be a numeric constant somewhere and runs
> > cleanly with valgrind but it really is pretty grubby.
> >
> > Have I missed something obvious? If not does anyone have any advice on
> > how I should improve the bindings?
>
> The string class in Vala should be treated as immutable in most cases,
> just like the String classes in C# and Java. I'd recommend you to use
> GLib.String (GString in C) if you want a string class that is better
> suitable for modification. GLib.String can be compared to the
> StringBuilder classes in C# and Java, maybe we should rename the class
> in the Vala bindings to reduce some confusion about "string" and
> "String".
>
> Something like the following should work:
>
> var str = new String.sized (256);
> stdin.gets (str.str, 256);

Thanks. This works as expected.
> What do other people think about renaming GLib.String to
> GLib.StringBuilder?

I'm only a beginner so can't really having a meaningful opinion renaming
something I've only just discovered.

However if strings are to be treated as immutable is strikes me that a
way of binding fgets() to Glib.String rather than string (or allowing it
return an freshly allocated string) would be an important enhancement to
prevent the breaking of that illusion.


-- 
Daniel Thompson <daniel07 redfelineninja org uk>