davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (William E. Davidsen Jr) (02/13/89)
In article <532@rpi.edu> jefu@pawl.rpi.edu (Jeffrey Putnam) writes: | I like the C model for strings. I like it mostly for its simplicity | and ease of use. It may well be that a representation for strings | that includes string length as a part of a structure is better for | efficiency, or more modular or whatever. But! the model used is | simple and introduces no magic into the language. | | Magic? Yup. Magic is what happens when the language (or operating system | or hardware) does something odd that is not reachable by the user. This | includes magic strings, magic arrays (arrays stored in the same way - that | is with extra information hidden from the user), magic library calls (like | some VMS calls) and so on. Getting things into implementation dependent structures (or typedefs) is hardly a new idea. No portable program ever cares what's in a FILE for instance, since there are a lot of non-UNIX implementations around. -- bill davidsen (wedu@ge-crd.arpa) {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen "Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me