Just realized that string descriptors are also useful when handling NUL
characters is not a requirement.
2024-10-12 Bruno Haible <br...@clisp.org>
doc: Recommend string descriptors for application area like parsers.
* doc/string-desc.texi (Handling strings with NUL characters): Mention
the ease of taking a substring.
diff --git a/doc/string-desc.texi b/doc/string-desc.texi
index 1d252164e6..602ec162b0 100644
--- a/doc/string-desc.texi
+++ b/doc/string-desc.texi
@@ -21,7 +21,16 @@
shorter than they were meant to be. In most application areas, this is
not a problem, and the @code{char *} type is well usable.
-In areas where strings with embedded NUL characters need to be handled,
+A second problem of this string representation is that
+taking a substring is not cheap:
+it either requires a memory allocation
+or a destructive modification of the string.
+The former has a runtime cost;
+the latter complicates the logic of the program.
+This matters for application areas that analyze text, such as parsers.
+
+In areas where strings with embedded NUL characters need to be handled
+or where taking substrings is a recurrent operation,
the common approach is to use a @code{char *ptr} pointer variable
together with a @code{size_t nbytes} variable (or an @code{idx_t nbytes}
variable, if you want to avoid problems due to integer overflow). This
