Re: [Chicken-hackers] CHICKEN in production

[John Cowan]

Peter Bex scripsit:

> Thanks for speaking up, I hadn't considered how big of a problem this
> would be for large, existing projects.  We could possibly make it a
> runtime option, so the checking (or just the enforcing) could be enabled
> or disabled at will.

Here are my suggestions for staging this change.

Next release of Chicken 4:

Continue to allow NUL in strings (backward compatible)
Add a trailing hidden NUL to all strings (C compatible)
Eliminate copying in the FFI (big performance win)
Continue checking for NUL in the FFI (safety)

Chicken 4 with run-time option / Chicken 5 by default:

Disallow NUL in strings (break backward compatibility)
Eliminate checking for NUL in the FFI (no longer needed)

How does that sound?

-- 
John Cowan          http://www.ccil.org/~cowan        address@hidden
'My young friend, if you do not now, immediately and instantly, pull
as hard as ever you can, it is my opinion that your acquaintance in the
large-pattern leather ulster' (and by this he meant the Crocodile) 'will
jerk you into yonder limpid stream before you can say Jack Robinson.'
        --the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake