Re: How to avoid using arrays for strings???
On Nov 16, 8:53 pm, mike3 <mike4...@yahoo.com> wrote:
Thanks for the interesting views on arrays. However it does
not really answer the question at hand, which is for this
Windows program, would it be easier/better (I'm thinking about
code maintainability, clarity, simplicity, robustness, bug
potential, etc. (and that last one, bug potential, is just as
significant as the others) when I'm talking about things
being "better" in this circumstance) to use the standard C++ library's
std::string/std::wstring, or to use arrays plus
Windows's safe string functions,
The standard containers, definitly. Converting at the interface
when necessary: for better or for worse, things like:
someFunction( &v[0], v.size() ) ;
are a standard idiom---not just under Windows.
or make some custom container that provides a C++-style
interface to those Windows "safe string" manipulations?
The Windows "safe string" manipulations aren't really that safe.
They're just better than the C standard functions. (And they
aren't really Windows---they're part of a TR by the C
committee.)
Would you, if you were the one making this
program, frown on seeing arrays of "TCHAR" in there?
Definitely. In fact, I'd probably frown on seeing TCHAR at all.
If you're dealing with text correctly, wide characters and
narrow characters require different handling; just changing a
typedef isn't sufficient.
Would it introduce too much of a bug-inducing "abstraction
gap"? Ie. would you risk getting "cut" by the "knife" too
much here?
The risk is much greater, and the ammount of code you'll have to
write is much greater. And there's really no need for it.
Using TCHAR[] is a bad engineering choice from all points of
view.
--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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