Re: Internal Representation of Strings

Tony <tony@my.net> wrote:


> What are some good ways/concepts of internal string representation?
> Are/should string literals, fixed-length strings and dynamic-lenght strings
> handled differently? <snip>


The "best" string representations depends on the nature of your language
and its applications. The forms you describe are largely array based,
and are typical of imperative languages. They have the advantage of a
compact form, reducing memory usage, and ease of access to the
components of the string. Such languages also rely on arrays and provide
the infrastructure for manipulating arrays. Functional languages will
typically use a list of characters. This has greater flexibility in
string construction and modification, and uses the primary data
structure of such languages, so that most of the infrastructure of the
language is readilly available.


--
Bill Clodius
los the lost and net the pet to email

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