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0 pointsrbanffy5y ago0 comments

> strings in C are actually hard,

Strings in C are more like a lie. You get a pointer to a character and the hope there is a null somewhere before you hit a memory protection wall. Or a buffer for something completely unrelated to your string.

And that's with ASCII, where a character fits inside a byte. Don't even think about UTF-8 or any other variable-length character representation.

In fairness, the moment you realize ASCII strings are a tiny subset of what a string can be, you also understand why strings are actually very complicated.

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sellyme5y ago

> In fairness, the moment you realize ASCII strings are a tiny subset of what a string can be, you also understand why strings are actually very complicated.

Oh absolutely, but it's a pretty reasonable expectation that any contemporary language should handle that complexity for you. The entire job of a language is to make the fundamental concepts easier to work with.

jstanley5y ago

C very much does make the fundamental concepts easier to work with, it merely disagrees with you about exactly which concepts are fundamental :).

rbanffyOP5y ago

Sadly, strings are, at the same time, complicated enough to be left outside the fundamental concepts of a language, but far too useful to be left outside the fundamental concepts of a realistically viable language.

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