Re: Lacking of a ref-counted string.

["Mikkel Kamstrup Erlandsen" <mikkel kamstrup gmail com>]

2008/8/21 Yu Feng <rainwoodman gmail com>:
> On Wed, 2008-08-20 at 17:59 -0400, Havoc Pennington wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Yu Feng <rainwoodman gmail com> wrote:
>> > Is there any particular reason that GLib doesn't provide a ref-counted
>> > string and a ref-counted array type? Lacking them in GLib makes the VALA
>> > language a real pain.
>> >
>>
>> I think you would have to explain more why this is an issue for vala,
>> at least for me (maybe everyone else already knows)
>
> OK.
>
> Vala claims automatic memory management and a programming language on
> top of GLib.
>
> First, it is very difficult to manage a string without a reference
> count. The current vala implementation is to assume that strings are
> immutable, and to copy the strings almost everywhere where increasing
> the ref-count should be used. The copying mechanism produces workable
> code, but doesn't work in a efficient way. This is where it hurts.
>
> Secondly, vala doesn't introduce any additional dependency other than
> GLib, to implement it in VALA level, the only way is to embed it in the
> compiler. A compiler with embeded code to do a ref-counted string
> doesn't sound nice. This is why I think it should be done at GLib level.

How about using a GStringChunk and apply some magic compile-time
logic? Although I am not quite sure how it should be done - you are
the wizards :-)

It could maybe also make more sense to add some more API to
GStringChunk as it is quite limited as it stands.

Cheers,
Mikkel