The documentation at Apple Developer Documentation shows that it is possible to use String where an UnsafePointer<Int8> is needed.
API calls to C that need a char* are translated to UnsafePointer<Int8>.
It follows that we can use a String where a char* is needed.
However in C a string is not only a char*, it is also null-terminated.
What I cannot find though is the guarantee that the buffer where the String is converted to an UTF8 sequence is always null-terminated.
I very much suspect it is, and all my tests did find a null-terminated string.
Question: Does anybody know for sure that the buffer is always null-terminated? (a link to where I can check this would be most appreciated)
The documentation at Swift | Apple Developer Documentation shows that it is possible to use String where an UnsafePointer<Int8> is needed.
API calls to C that need a char* are translated to UnsafePointer<Int8>.
It follows that we can use a String where a char* is needed.
However in C a string is not only a char*, it is also null-terminated.
What I cannot find though is the guarantee that the buffer where the String is converted to an UTF8 sequence is always null-terminated.
I very much suspect it is, and all my tests did find a null-terminated string.
Question: Does anybody know for sure that the buffer is always null-terminated? (a link to where I can check this would be most appreciated)
String has a property called utf8CString which is documented as "A contiguously stored null-terminated UTF-8 representation of the string.” I’d use that.
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On 3 Jan 2017, at 12:28, Rien via swift-users <swift-users@swift.org> wrote: