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Fixes nits in string guide #17453

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142 changes: 120 additions & 22 deletions src/doc/guide-strings.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -96,12 +96,11 @@ need, and it can make your lifetimes more complex.

## Generic functions

To write a function that's generic over types of strings, use [the `Str`
trait](http://doc.rust-lang.org/std/str/trait.Str.html):
To write a function that's generic over types of strings, use `&str`.

```{rust}
fn some_string_length<T: Str>(x: T) -> uint {
x.as_slice().len()
fn some_string_length(x: &str) -> uint {
x.len()
}

fn main() {
Expand All @@ -111,15 +110,12 @@ fn main() {

let s = "Hello, world".to_string();

println!("{}", some_string_length(s));
println!("{}", some_string_length(s.as_slice()));
}
```

Both of these lines will print `12`.

The only method that the `Str` trait has is `as_slice()`, which gives you
access to a `&str` value from the underlying string.

## Comparisons

To compare a String to a constant string, prefer `as_slice()`...
Expand Down Expand Up @@ -161,25 +157,93 @@ indexing is basically never what you want to do. The reason is that each
character can be a variable number of bytes. This means that you have to iterate
through the characters anyway, which is a O(n) operation.

To iterate over a string, use the `graphemes()` method on `&str`:
There's 3 basic levels of unicode (and its encodings):

- code units, the underlying data type used to store everything
- code points/unicode scalar values (char)
- graphemes (visible characters)

Rust provides iterators for each of these situations:

- `.bytes()` will iterate over the underlying bytes
- `.chars()` will iterate over the code points
- `.graphemes()` will iterate over each grapheme

Usually, the `graphemes()` method on `&str` is what you want:
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I feel like this sentence is being too strong and prescriptive. I'm not really sure...

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If your intention is to 'fetch character x' like you would an ASCII string, I think this is correct.


```{rust}
let s = "αἰθήρ";
let s = "u͔n͈̰̎i̙̮͚̦c͚̉o̼̩̰͗d͔̆̓ͥé";
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Could you check all this combining character stuff renders correctly in a few different browsers etc.? (Github is certainly doing a bad job of it.)

It be be wroth reducing the number slightly.

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Really? It renders just fine on GitHub for me.

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bummer:
screenshot from 2014-09-23 09 48 05

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Oddly enough, that's what I see in gmail! (as in, maybe it is a github thing?)

graphemes

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I took my screenshot in github.

I'd actually bet that it's probably that I have fonts installed that you don't?

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Perhaps? My first screenshot was in github and the second was on gmail, not sure what's going on.

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It does seem to render differently in Chrome:
cholr

vs in Firefox:
ffolr

So it seems that it is not related to installed system fonts....

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(Woah, Safari is doing a bad job.)

The best example of the problems is the grapheme section below, I find it hard to believe that the combining characters shouldn't be over their main letter.

misplaced

It may just be an issue of fonts, but we could try to tweak the example so it's slightly more portable.

Also, I'm most concerned about this when actually rendered, since that's how most people will be viewing it. @steveklabnik could you put up a rustdoc'd version somewhere (with all the CSS)?


for l in s.graphemes(true) {
println!("{}", l);
}
```

This prints:

```{notrust,ignore}
n͈̰̎
i̙̮͚̦
c͚̉
o̼̩̰͗
d͔̆̓ͥ
```

Note that `l` has the type `&str` here, since a single grapheme can consist of
multiple codepoints, so a `char` wouldn't be appropriate.

This will print out each character in turn, as you'd expect: first "α", then
"ἰ", etc. You can see that this is different than just the individual bytes.
Here's a version that prints out each byte:
This will print out each visible character in turn, as you'd expect: first "u͔", then
"n͈̰̎", etc. If you wanted each individual codepoint of each grapheme, you can use `.chars()`:

```{rust}
let s = "αἰθήρ";
let s = "u͔n͈̰̎i̙̮͚̦c͚̉o̼̩̰͗d͔̆̓ͥé";

for l in s.chars() {
println!("{}", l);
}
```

This prints:

```{notrust,ignore}
u
͔
n
̎
͈
̰
i
̙
̮
͚
̦
c
̉
͚
o
͗
̼
̩
̰
d
̆
̓
ͥ
͔
e
́
```

You can see how some of them are combining characters, and therefore the output
looks a bit odd.

If you want the individual byte representation of each codepoint, you can use
`.bytes()`:

```{rust}
let s = "u͔n͈̰̎i̙̮͚̦c͚̉o̼̩̰͗d͔̆̓ͥé";

for l in s.bytes() {
println!("{}", l);
Expand All @@ -189,16 +253,50 @@ for l in s.bytes() {
This will print:

```{notrust,ignore}
206
177
225
188
117
205
148
110
204
142
205
136
204
176
206
184
206
105
204
153
204
174
207
205
154
204
166
99
204
137
205
154
111
205
151
204
188
204
169
204
176
100
204
134
205
131
205
165
205
148
101
204
129
```

Expand Down