fdo#38838 - Removal/Replacement of the String/UniString with OUString once and for all.

[Michael Stahl]

On 15/01/13 13:58, Jean-Noël Rouvignac wrote:

>   * What are the guidelines to replace String? When to use OString and
>     when to use OUString?

in almost all cases, convert to OUString.

there also used to be a ByteString that corresponded to OString but that
has already been removed.

>   * What is XubString?
>     https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/String_Classes does
>     not mention it.

it is the same as String.

tools/inc/tools/solar.h:

#define UniString       String
#define XubString       String
#define xub_StrLen      sal_uInt16

>   * What about the associated type xub_StrLen ?

good question... there is code that loops over the sal_Unicode UTF-16
code units in the string (Note: those are not "characters").  since
String has a maximum capacity of 2^16, and the xub_StrLen is a "short",
and OUString of 2^31 the indexes in such loops most likely need to be
adapted to sal_Int32.

there is also a method OUString::iterateCodePoints that gives the actual
characters, which could be useful in some places.

> If somebody has got the answers, could he update
> https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/String_Classes?

i'll try to do that...

> Finally I noticed there is no doxygen generated for XubString, UniString
> or String under http://api.libreoffice.org/docs.

that is not surprising, since those classes are (fortunately) not part
of the API, they are just LO implementation details (so we can remove them).