PR# 19305 Need new STRING creation procedure

I looked at the creation procedures for STRING_8 and IMMUTABLE_STRING_8 and could not
find one that provides what we need.  We need a creation procedure that takes a POINTER
and an INTEGER_32 length and creates a STRING_8 (or IMMUTABLE_STRING_8).  
The procedure should copy `length' bytes from the memory indicated by the pointer
into the `area', set count, etc.

The existing creation procedure `make_from_c' is very close, but it will not work because our strings 
may contain nulls (i.e., they are not null-terminated).

The creation procedure we want would look something like this (choose the name yourself):

   make_from_pointer_and_count (c_string: POINTER; a_length: INTEGER_32)
      require
         c_string_not_null: c_string /= default_pointer
         a_length_non_negative: a_length >= 0

Can this be added to class READABLE_STRING_8 and specified as a creation procedure
for STRING_8 and IMMUTABLE_STRING_8?

Note: There are other ways to get the effect we want, but they involve extra object creation
and copying of the bytes.

Great, this will be available in the next release (this is already available in the subversion repository).

The procedure you proposed would work fine for me.

Hi,

To answer your need, we plan to add a new creation a little bit more general

	make_from_c_substring (c_string: POINTER; start_pos, end_pos: INTEGER)
			-- Initialize from substring of `c_string',
			-- between `start_index' and `end_index',
			-- `c_string' created by some C function.
		require
			c_string_exists: c_string /= default_pointer
			start_position_big_enough: start_pos >= 1
			end_position_big_enough: start_pos <= end_pos + 1

And your suggestion:    make_from_pointer_and_count (c_string: POINTER; a_length: INTEGER_32)
is just replaced by  make_from_c_substring (c_string, 1, a_length)

Any comment? It would be implemented in next 17.05 release.