Version 1.8: Strings chapter overhaul

Hi there! I have just released version 1.8 of the book. Here comes the changelist:

Strings chapter overhaul

This version does some major changes to the strings chapter (chapter 11). It has been heavily revised and expanded. Some changes are:

• Clearer about how UTF-8 is decoded into runes.
• A section on how to manually decode UTF-8.
• The old “bubble” about null termination has been made into a proper section.
• The section “Deallocating strings mixed with string constants” has been made clearer and more useful by considering a map instead of an array.
• A section on how the phrase “string constant” can be ambiguous.
• The Windows section on UTF-16 has been mostly rewritten and now uses the new cstring16 type.
• Many, many more small changes and edits.

A small part of this updated strings chapter is available in this video and this blog post.

Changes to other chapters

• Chapter 1.5: Typo fix.
• Chapter 2.4: Note about odin run . -keep-executable (new Odin behavior).
• Chapter 3.2: Typo fix abut type inference.
• Chapter 5.3: Clarification about the .(Type) syntax used to check the variant of unions.
• Chapter 7.4: Clarified a sentence.
• Chapter 7.8: Add information about “contextless” requirement for @init and @fini.
• Chapter 10.1.5: Code typo fix.
• Chapter 10.3: Remove unnecessary slice operation.
• Chapter 11.6: Code typo fix.
• Chapter 15.2: Move bubble about bit_set initializers to a more appropriate location.
• Chapter 15.2.2: Typo fix.
• Chapter 15.3: Typo fix.
• … and several additional small fixes!

Thank you!

To get this new version, just re-download the book.

Thanks for buying my book!

Have a nice day! /Karl Zylinski