SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
1–10 of 48 posts
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#2Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C.
It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#3Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
But if your in C...
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#4Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
This is the guy that created Redis. I would look at his repos in a different way.
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#5Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
Suggesting C++ as a solution in the face of "masochist obsession" is... an interesting choice :-D
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#6Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
> SDS was a C string I developed in the past for my everyday C programming needs, later it was moved into Redis where it is used extensively and where it was modified in order to be suitable for high performance operations. Now it was extracted from Redis and forked as a stand alone project.
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#7Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
I guess those stuck on MSVC might have this perception, but newer C standards have added plenty of niceties. Unsure if the claim that Cpp is safer is correct.
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#8Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
Seems like everyone wants to believe they’re as skilled and hardcore as the kernel devs. In reality, I agree - C++ is basically a superset of C and the whole point of “you don’t pay for what you don’t use” is to be able to avoid ridiculous situations like these.
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#9Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
To actually answer your question (beyond the snark/appeal to authority replies you’ve already gotten), there are a couple good reasons:
— You're working in embedded development (but somehow need a full-fledged dynamic string library).
— While it's true that C++ is (almost) a strict superset of C, and “you don’t pay for what you don’t use” is a good rule of thumb, it can be very hard to restrict a team of developers to eschew all that complexity you dearly pay for and treat C++ as “C with classes and the STL.” Without very strict coding standards (and a means of enforcing them), letting a team of developers use C++ is often opening a Pandora's Box of complex, obscure language features. Restricting a project to plain old C heads that off at the pass.
Re: SDS: Simple Dynamic Strings library for C
#10Why not just use C++ strings and string_views? So weird to see this masochistic obsession some people have with doing everything in plain C. It's 2026, there are better, more memory safe, more efficient solutions out there.
If your code is plain C, then anyone can extend it with, or embed it inside, code of literally any other language; and in so doing, they will have full access/exposure to everything in your codebase — all the same stuff that they would if they were writing their host/extension code in C.
This is not true of C++ (or most other languages):
• C++ has a runtime (however minimal); and so, by including any C++ code in a codebase, you're making it much more difficult to link/embed the resulting code — you now have to also dynamically link the C++ runtime, and ensure that your host code spins it up "early", before any of the linked C++ code gets to run. (This may even be impossible in some host languages!)
• Also, even if there was no associated runtime to deal with, C++ isn't wholly C-FFI-clean. All the stuff that people like about C++ — all the reasons you'd want to use C++ — result in codebases that aren't cleanly C-FFI exposable, due to name mangling, functions taking parameters with non-C-exportable types, methods + closures not being C-FFI thunkable [and functions returning those], etc.
• And even if you bite that bullet, and write your library in C++ but carefully wrap its API to give it C-FFI-clean linkage (usually via a hybrid C / C++ project), this still introduces a layer of FFI runtime overhead. When another non-C language consumes your code, it's then getting double FFI overhead — a call from its code to yours has to convert from its abstractions, to C's abstractions, to C++'s abstractions, and back. (This is why you don't tend to see e.g. non-C++ projects embedding LLVM, or LLVM being extended with non-C++ passes, despite LLVM being designed in this "C wrapper around a C++ core" style.)
C is one of the only languages with a zero-impedance-mismatch, zero-overhead default or forced binding of external symbols to the C FFI (i.e. the C set of platform ABIs + C symbol naming standard.)
The others that do this are: C3 (https://c3-lang.org/); Zig, unless you do weird things on purpose, and... that's really it. Everything else has the same two problems as C++ outlined above.
Even Rust, even Odin, etc. only provide C-FFI linkage as an opt-in feature; and they do nothing to incentivize use of it; and so, of course, due to their useful non-C-FFI-clean features, developers are disincentivized from ever enabling it before they "need" it. So in practice, most libraries in those languages are not consumable from C [or other C-FFI-compatible languages] — and most software in those languages are not extendable in C [or another C-FFI-compatible language] — without extra effort on the upstream's part to add explicit support for doing that. And most upstreams don't bother.
Writing software in C itself, is essentially a way for a project to "tie itself to the mast" and commit to its ABI always being C-FFI clean; such that it can be consumed not only from C, but also from any other language a project might use that supports importing C-FFI libraries. (Which is most languages.)