[whatwg] API for encoding/decoding ArrayBuffers into text

[Glenn Maynard]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 1:44 AM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:

> Scanning over the buffer twice will cause a lot more memory IO and
> will definitely be slower.
>

That's what cache is for.  But: benchmarks...

We can argue weather it's meaningfully slower or harder. But it seems
> like we agree that it's slower and harder.
>

What?  Are you really arguing that we should do something because of
*meaningless* differences?

I still don't understand what that benefit you are seeing is. You
> hinted at some "more generic" argument, but I still don't understand
> it. So far the only reason that has been brought up is that it
> provides an API for simply finding null terminators which could be
> useful if you are doing things other than decoding. Is that what you
> are talking about when you are saying that it's "more generic"?
>

Yes, I've said that repeatedly.  It also avoids bloating the API with
something that's merely a helper for something you can do in a couple lines
of code, and allows you to tell how many bytes/words were consumed (eg. for
packed string arrays).

It can always be added later, but it feels unnecessary.

-- 
Glenn Maynard