[XML-DEV Mailing List Archive Home] [By Thread] [By Date] [Recent Entries] [Reply To This Message]

genx - string termination and bounding

  • To: xml-dev mailing list <xml-dev@l...>
  • Subject: genx - string termination and bounding
  • From: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>
  • Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2004 19:39:50 -0800

string termination
I'm really sympathetic to the calls for counted rather than 
null-terminated strings, if only for the genxText() call.

So I was thinking about this back before we nuked the codePoint * 
versions, and I realized that a "length" argument could be confusing 
because in the codePoint* version it would naturally be the number of 
characters, while in the utf8Byte * version it would naturally be the 
number of bytes.  Blecch.  So I thought it would be more natural to 
have something like

  genxText(genxWriter w, utf8Byte * start, utf8Byte * end)

i.e. a pointer to the end of the string, which would have the same 
semantics in both versions of the call.  Well, we're losing the 
codePoint * stuff (good riddance) but I'd kind of like to stay with the 
stop-here argument rather than the byte (or character) count argument.

Of course if you want to null-terminate, you can, just do

  genxText(w, buf, NULL)

Two questions:
- if you have a zero byte in the string before you get to the end mark, 
should it just stop, or throw an error?  The first is more consistent 
with C culture (cf strncpy) but the latter a bit more stringent.  
Moderately leaning to just stopping.
- if the stop marker is stupidly in the middle of a UTF-8 character, 
genx should detect this and declare an error.  The existence of this 
situation is the only good argument for a count rather than a stopper.  
But not quite good enough.  -Tim


PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Buy Stylus Studio Now

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Don't miss another message! Subscribe to this list today.
Email
First Name
Last Name
Company
Subscribe in XML format
RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3
 

Stylus Studio has published XML-DEV in RSS and ATOM formats, enabling users to easily subcribe to the list from their preferred news reader application.


Stylus Studio Sponsored Links are added links designed to provide related and additional information to the visitors of this website. they were not included by the author in the initial post. To view the content without the Sponsor Links please click here.

Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks
Free Stylus Studio XML Training:
W3C Member
Stylus Studio® and DataDirect XQuery ™are products from DataDirect Technologies, is a registered trademark of Progress Software Corporation, in the U.S. and other countries. © 2004-2013 All Rights Reserved.