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0134-rename-string-properties.md

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Rename two UTF8-related properties on String

Introduction

This proposal removes nulTerminatedUTF8 and renames nulTerminatedUTF8CString to enhance clarity and reduce mismatch between user expectations and the Swift programming language.

Swift-evolution thread: Discussion thread

Motivation

Both nulTerminatedUTF8 and nulTerminatedUTF8CString are poorly named for the following reasons:

  • Inappropriate abbreviation of a term of art: The ASCII names for \0 are "null character" or "null terminator". Both properties instead use the ASCII abbreviation "NUL" in place of the English word "null". A Google search returned approximately 20,000 results for "NUL-terminated string" and approximately 200,000 results for "null-terminated string".
  • Impaired recognition: "NUL" is less recognizable than "null". Further, "NUL" suffers from reduced recognition when written in lowercase: nulTerminated.
  • Hindered source completion: When using source editor completion, users who type "null" will not find a property named nulTerminatedUTF8 or nulTerminatedUTF8CString.
  • Redundant terminology: C strings are terminated by the null character. Using both "C string" and "null-terminated" is redundant and, to some, could unintentionally raise questions as to whether some C strings might not be null-terminated.

This proposal removes nulTerminatedUTF8 and eliminates the redundancy in nulTerminatedUTF8CString.

Detailed design

This proposal introduces the following changes to the Swift standard library:

  • Rename nulTerminatedUTF8CString to utf8CString.
  • Remove nulTerminatedUTF8.

utf8CString

This property renaming follows the precedent of the related Foundation method cString(using: .utf8) and lowercases its leading utf8.

nulTerminatedUTF8

This property is a null-terminated contiguous array of a string's UTF8 representation. The core team has indicated that clients would be better served by using the utf8CString property and has concluded that nulTerminatedUTF8 should be removed outright.

Impact on existing code

Fix-its will be needed to help transition existing code.

Alternatives considered

The alternative is not to rename the stated properties.