Comment by xg15

3 years ago

Yeah, but then I have to side with the author - how could a compile time only feature which doesn't even introduce new language semantics possibly be affected by the multitude of build targets?

Unless "it's more complicated than you think" is the catchall answer to any and all proposals for new language features. In which case, how to make progress at all?

Also, I find the point about the language being "truly portable" a bit ironic, considering the whole rationale of #embed was that the use case of "embed large chunks of binary data in the executable" was completely non-portable and required adding significant complexity to the build scripts if you were targeting multiple platforms.

It's easy to make a language portable on paper if you simply declare the non-portable parts to not be your responsibility.

> Everyone in the wg14 who has been around for a while, knows this, and therefore assumes that even the simplest addition will cause problems, even if they cant come up with a reason why.

That's not something to be proud of.

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xg15

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quelsolaar  3 years ago

> That's not something to be proud of.

Its learning from old mistakes.

Look at embed as an example. Look how complex it is, dealing with empty files, different ways of opening files, files without lengths, null termination... the list goes on. This is typical of a proposal for C, it starts out simple "why cant i just embed a file in to my code?" and then it gets complicated because the world is complicated.

I worry a lot about people loading in text files and forgetting to add null termination to embeds. I would not be surprised if in a few years that provides a big headline on Hacker news, about how that shot someone in the foot and how C isn't to be trusted. The details matter.

  • iainmerrick  3 years ago

    I worry a lot about people loading in text files and forgetting to add null termination to embeds.

    If you really worry about that, why did you vote in favour of this feature (as you stated earlier)?

    • nindalf  3 years ago

      He’s just trying to justify why it took 5 years to approve a feature that is so similar to #include.

  • rurban  3 years ago

    null termination is not to be added to embed. embed adds a const sized buffer of unsigned bytes, not strings. files are not strings, files do contain \0.

    and I still don't get why embed is so much better than xxd included buffers. it's more convenient sure, but 10x faster?

  • duped  3 years ago

    > I worry a lot about people loading in text files and forgetting to add null termination to embeds. I would not be surprised if in a few years that provides a big headline on Hacker news, about how that shot someone in the foot and how C isn't to be trusted. The details matter.

    The compiler should insert the null terminator if it's not in the embedded file.

    • quelsolaar  3 years ago

      This is another issue here. If loads of compilers start doing this then programs start relying on it an then it becomes a de-facto undocumented feature. That means if you move compilers/platforms you get new issues. A lot of what the C standard does is mopping up these kinds of issues.

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    • nyanpasu64  3 years ago

      I don't think adding a null terminator is useful for binary files which are not null-terminated strings, and may even have embedded 0 bytes in the middle.

      4 replies →