Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org> writes:
> struct
> {
> size_t nbytes;
> char * data;
> }
>
> I propose to add a module that adds such a type, together with elementary
> functions that work on them.I think this is a useful contribution, however I see two deal-breakers for having it in gnulib -- both related to use in libraries. I think string helpers types/functions like this is useful not only in applications but also in libraries. Thus: 1) License - there really isn't much novelty here, how about making this public domain or LGPLv2+? 2) Applicability to use in a library - using x*alloc and abort is frowned upon in libraries. Libraries should return error codes on expected errors (and I argue memory allocation failure is an expected error), and not cause application exits. What do you think? One way to resolve 2) is to have two variants of this functionality: one low-level variant that doesn't abort the application on errors, and one high-level variant that behaves like your implementation. The high-level variant could depend on the low-level variant, but that's not essential. /Simon
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
