Re: [Vala] Question regarding passing a strings as arguments to a method

[Abderrahim Kitouni <a kitouni gmail com>]

Hello,


On 11 يول, 2011 م 05:15, Serge Hulne wrote:
> All right,
>
> But it is a rather odd class indeed then, because:
>
> 1) I dont't think it has the value "null" when unassigned.
It does (or at least it should).


> 2) It derogates to the rule according to which the default behaviour in
> an assignment between class types is by reference (when a string is
> assigned to another, the default is to copy the data, unless it is
> explicitly declared "unowned")

Not really: the default behaviour in an assignment is to either 
increment the refcount or copy (depending on whether the class is 
refcounted or not), except that if the class isn't refcounted and isn't 
immutable (GLib.List for example) you'll need to explicitly copy it. But 
since string is immutable (and this is where it is special, though you 
can make your class behave so), it will be implicitly copied.

> 3) When a string is created, it does not require the use of the keyword
> "new"
> ( it is: string s = "hello";  not: string s = new string("hello"); )
This is just because of the existence of string literals. If there were 
list literals in vala, you could create a list without using the new 
keyword. (I think there are list literals in the dova profile).

> 4) Yet, it is passed by reference in a function call.
Like any other class ;-)


> Since the string class, seems to behave unlike any other class, perhaps
> its singular behaviour ought to be emphasized in the documentation.

So yes, it is a bit unusual, but once you understand how vala works, 
you'll find it more logical.

HTH,
Abderrahim