We briefly discussed this when adding the new String type but couldn't
settle on a name. However, having to use String::from_utf8() on every
literal string is a bit unwieldy, so let's have these options available!
Naming-wise '_string' is not as short as 'sv' but should be relatively
clear; it also matches '_bigint' and '_ubigint' in length.
'_short_string' may be longer than the actual string itself, but it's
still an improvement over the static function :^)
Since our C++ source files are UTF-8 encoded anyway, it should be
impossible to create a string literal with invalid UTF-8, so including
that in the name is not as important as in the function that can receive
arbitrary data.
In cases where we know a string literal will fit in the short string
storage, we can do so at compile time without needing to handle error
propagation. If the provided string literal is too long, a compilation
error will be emitted due to the failed VERIFY statement being a non-
constant expression.
The Unicode spec defines much more complicated caseless matching
algorithms in its Collation spec. This implements the "basic" case
folding comparison.
These are formatters that can only be used with debug print
functions, such as dbgln(). Currently this is limited to
Formatter<ErrorOr<T>>. With this you can still debug log ErrorOr
values (good for debugging), but trying to use them in any
String::formatted() call will fail (which prevents .to_string()
errors with the new failable strings being ignored).
You make a formatter debug only by adding a constexpr method like:
static constexpr bool is_debug_only() { return true; }
This implements a FlyString that will de-duplicate String instances. The
FlyString will store the raw encoded data of the String instance: If the
String is a short string, FlyString holds the String::ShortString bytes;
otherwise FlyString holds a pointer to the Detail::StringData.
FlyString itself does not know about String's storage or how to refcount
its Detail::StringData. It defers to String to implement these details.
Since AK can't refer to LibUnicode directly, the strategy here is that
if you need case transformations, you can link LibUnicode and receive
them. If you try to use either of these methods without linking it, then
you'll of course get a linker error (note we don't do any fallbacks to
e.g. ASCII case transformations). If you don't need these methods, you
don't have to link LibUnicode.
s p a c e s h i p o p e r a t o r
Comparing UTF-8 can be done by simple byte lexicographic comparison per
definition, so we just piggy-back on StringView's high-performance
comparator.
DeprecatedString (formerly String) has been with us since the start,
and it has served us well. However, it has a number of shortcomings
that I'd like to address.
Some of these issues are hard if not impossible to solve incrementally
inside of DeprecatedString, so instead of doing that, let's build a new
String class and then incrementally move over to it instead.
Problems in DeprecatedString:
- It assumes string allocation never fails. This makes it impossible
to use in allocation-sensitive contexts, and is the reason we had to
ban DeprecatedString from the kernel entirely.
- The awkward null state. DeprecatedString can be null. It's different
from the empty state, although null strings are considered empty.
All code is immediately nicer when using Optional<DeprecatedString>
but DeprecatedString came before Optional, which is how we ended up
like this.
- The encoding of the underlying data is ambiguous. For the most part,
we use it as if it's always UTF-8, but there have been cases where
we pass around strings in other encodings (e.g ISO8859-1)
- operator[] and length() are used to iterate over DeprecatedString one
byte at a time. This is done all over the codebase, and will *not*
give the right results unless the string is all ASCII.
How we solve these issues in the new String:
- Functions that may allocate now return ErrorOr<String> so that ENOMEM
errors can be passed to the caller.
- String has no null state. Use Optional<String> when needed.
- String is always UTF-8. This is validated when constructing a String.
We may need to add a bypass for this in the future, for cases where
you have a known-good string, but for now: validate all the things!
- There is no operator[] or length(). You can get the underlying data
with bytes(), but for iterating over code points, you should be using
an UTF-8 iterator.
Furthermore, it has two nifty new features:
- String implements a small string optimization (SSO) for strings that
can fit entirely within a pointer. This means up to 3 bytes on 32-bit
platforms, and 7 bytes on 64-bit platforms. Such small strings will
not be heap-allocated.
- String can create substrings without making a deep copy of the
substring. Instead, the superstring gets +1 refcount from the
substring, and it acts like a view into the superstring. To make
substrings like this, use the substring_with_shared_superstring() API.
One caveat:
- String does not guarantee that the underlying data is null-terminated
like DeprecatedString does today. While this was nifty in a handful of
places where we were calling C functions, it did stand in the way of
shared-superstring substrings.
We have a new, improved string type coming up in AK (OOM aware, no null
state), and while it's going to use UTF-8, the name UTF8String is a
mouthful - so let's free up the String name by renaming the existing
class.
Making the old one have an annoying name will hopefully also help with
quick adoption :^)
This patch adds the `USING_AK_GLOBALLY` macro which is enabled by
default, but can be overridden by build flags.
This is a step towards integrating Jakt and AK types.
C++20 can automatically synthesize `operator!=` from `operator==`, so
there is no point in writing such functions by hand if all they do is
call through to `operator==`.
This fixes a compile error with compilers that implement P2468 (Clang
16 currently). This paper restores the C++17 behavior that if both
`T::operator==(U)` and `T::operator!=(U)` exist, `U == T` won't be
rewritten in reverse to call `T::operator==(U)`. Removing `!=` operators
makes the rewriting possible again.
See https://reviews.llvm.org/D134529#3853062
These are guarded with #ifndef KERNEL, since doubles (and floats) are
not allowed in KERNEL mode.
In StringUtils there is convert_to_floating_point which does have a
template parameter incase you have a templated type.
During the removal of StringView(char const*), all users of these
functions were removed, and they are of dubious value (relying on
implicit StringView conversion).
This commit has no behavior changes.
In particular, this does not fix any of the wrong uses of the previous
default parameter (which used to be 'false', meaning "only replace the
first occurence in the string"). It simply replaces the default uses by
String::replace(..., ReplaceMode::FirstOnly), leaving them incorrect.
