Null-terminated strings with Pack.write()

[Phil Rhodes]

Can we have a way to null-terminate strings written with Pack.write()?

 

Quite often, strings written to binary files are null-terminated, as in C, and it would be nice to have an option to do this.

 

P

[Daniel Friesen]

Write a "\0", write a 1 byte 0 integer, or append a "\0" to the end of
your string. Writing a null byte is easy.
What's tougher is reading a null terminated string. Something that reads
until a binary sequence or EOF at a low level would be good.

~Daniel Friesen (Dantman, Nadir-Seen-Fire) [http://daniel.friesen.name]

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[Phil Rhodes]

> Write a "\0", write a 1 byte 0 integer, or append a "\0" to the end of
> your string.

Wha, does JSlibs support a literal "\0" as a null in a string?

Actually, come to think of it, you could also write String.fromCharCode(0).
Could you? (type type type) yes you could.

> What's tougher is reading a null terminated string. Something that reads
> until a binary sequence or EOF at a low level would be good.

Seconded.

But readUntil() for files is more important. As is seekUntil().

P

[Daniel Friesen]

Phil Rhodes wrote:
>> Write a "\0", write a 1 byte 0 integer, or append a "\0" to the end of
>> your string.
>>
>
> Wha, does JSlibs support a literal "\0" as a null in a string?
>
> Actually, come to think of it, you could also write String.fromCharCode(0).
> Could you? (type type type) yes you could.

> ...
> P
>
That's what ECMAScript supports, nothing to do with jslibs, \0 in a
string literal is a null char ("\0" and String.fromCharCode(0) output
the exact same thing).
Internally chars are stored in 16bits though jslibs only writes 8bits so
it's not a problem (well, besides the storage in memory being twice the
size of the data you are storing for any binary data stored in a
string). I still prefer having (and using) a set type for binary data.

[soubok]

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Yes, unfortunately there is nothing in JavaScript to store binary data
without having this twice-size issue.
jslibs address this issue with the Blob class that stores only 8bits
data and behaves like a JavaScript String. The Blob is seamlessly
mutated into a String when complex API (like regexp, ...) is used.

Franck.

[Daniel Friesen]

For now. The CommonJS group is standardizing one now, and it's likely
that ECMA will take that and make it part of ECMAScript after some tweaks.