Re: [AD] Export AL_VECTOR

[Peter Wang <novalazy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 2008-06-18, Thomas Fjellstrom <tfjellstrom@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I would like to see AL_VECTOR be a public Allegro 5 api. The fshook stuff 
> would like to deal with paths a lot, and the splitdir/catdir set of functions 
> would be greatly simplified with a public vector interface.
> 
> I've asked around a little, and have found that people would indeed use 
> splitdir and catdir and related functions, the problem is, without a 
> resizeable array api to give to the caller, it would be hard, if not 
> impossible to resize the char** array if needed (to pass back to 
> catdir/catpath etc).
> 
> I'm trying to make this an api that people would actually want to use over the 
> various system specific apis, making common actions with paths simpler. 
> Without it I think allegro is missing a very important /platform/ feature. 
> Allegro is a platform, and a platform needs a good set of consistent file and 
> path api functions.
> 
> Without a public AL_VECTOR, I'd have to either use char** arrays, or implement 
> my own dynamic array api just for the fs api. I find that wrong on a few 
> levels.

You can export an (opaque) resizable array API which is specific to the
fs API, and implement that using _AL_VECTOR.  Would that be okay?

I'm not completely against exporting a generic resizable array API but
the _AL_VECTOR interface isn't that good.  We want to be able to change
it without breaking backwards compatibility with user programs.

Peter