librdx

ABC slices

Originally, C lacked the concept of slices, many reinventing their own. An ABC slice is a pair of pointers: [head, term). A slice is consumed by moving the head towards term. A slice has four shades of const:

1. a fully writable slice often denotes the free space available for output, e.g. $u8;
2. a const-value slice is most often the input data to be consumed, e.g. $u8c;
3. an immovable slice $cu8 can be edited, not consumed;
4. an immutable slice e.g. $cu8c can not be either consumed or edited.

A slice argument is always passed as a pointer, so these shades are important. Also, $dup is often used to create a duplicate slice for consumption by the callee.

An ABC slice also serves as an iterator, e.g.

    $u32 numbers;
    ...
    $eat(numbers) {
        printf("%u\n", **numbers);
    }

Most often, a slice is a segment of an ABC buffer.