[SUGGESTION] Standard string format?

[aponigricon]

Both in AtlasOS and now also here in Atlas2, you've decided to use null-terminated strings as the standard string format both for system constants, and in the standard API... But what about quitting using null-terminated strings and evolve our operating system's infrastructure completely by using length-prefixed strings?

I could write multi-dimensional arrays containing arguments for p-strings, and disadvantages of t-strings, but let me just leave a few mere hyperlinks: :wink: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_(computer_science)#Null-terminated http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_(computer_science)#Length-prefixed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Null-terminated_string#Limitations

[noxer]

Its an interesting suggestion. I thought about that too. The only reason not to do it is the compatibility to C. A second issue is, that we waste one byte per character when using one word to save it. How about a length-prefixed compressed string?

[aponigricon]

C is a very weak language compared to the possibilities with DASM-16. We're better off making our own language... COMAL, anyone?

And a P-string uses the exact same amount of words as a T-string, so I don't think I understand what you mean by that it wastes a byte or whatever.

And compressed length-prefixed strings is indeed a possibility, but would be quite annoying to hardcode into the system...

[aponigricon]

If we're going to make our own programming language, should it be strongly typed, or weakly?

I can imagine that most of the people who are going to use it are probably the users themselves who need to write fast, imperative scripts... thus a weak typing paradgim should be the best option?

[noxer]

Its depends. A scripting language should be weakly typed. A precompiled language (maybe at install time or first run) should be strongly typed so we can optimize it.