Miss Dada  🏳️‍⚧️

but it's not an &c_char? But yes, having safer bindings using pointers works. you still need the raw stuff a lot

you can have safer ffi -- I did this kind of thing extensively in gecko where the extern API had borrowed references -- but that doesn't obviate the need for things like CString

I was responding to a tweet contending that we should get rid of CString. I didn't say the libc thing couldn't be safer. I totally agree your thing works on that angle. Again, I used that same trick a million times in Stylo

Having a &c_char value and then sending that to C code which expects to read the starting char as well as following chars until the null will give UB because it'll end up using pointers off the end of the object.

I don't think `&` implies anything different than `*const` does WRT object size

I've actually been wondering that too. It at least to LLVM is a hint that at least sizeof(T) many bytes are safely derefenceable, but idk if anything beyond that is strictly UB

It doesn't have a different memory repr, but it does have narrowed provenance for the pointer you get. That's why the as_ptr method for slices first makes *const [T] and then makes *const T, in that very specific ordering. Sounds stupid, but RalfJ assures me it's true.