[]enum(u8){_} as string type

[squeek502]

@vulpesx

Since the compiler enforces utf8 string literals

This is only true in the sense that the source encoding of Zig files is enforced to be UTF-8, but in practical terms I don’t see that as relevant, since, for example, "\xFF" is a valid string literal but the resulting bytes are invalid UTF-8. My full thoughts on the general topic can be found here:

Zig’s lack of a string type & invalid values

I don’t think this is the correct way to look at it. Instead, I’d say string literals in Zig are arbitrary sequences of bytes, and Zig makes it convenient to create UTF-8 encoded string literals. For example, take @embedFile: @embedFile(comptime path: []const u8) *const [N:0]u8 This function returns a compile time constant pointer to null-terminated, fixed-size array with length equal to the byte count of the file given by path. The contents of the array are the contents of the file. This i…