`string` type

Strings in Gofra are represented as fat pointers — also known as string views or string slices.

A string is a pair of:

a pointer to the underlying bytes (*char[]),
a length in bytes (int).

The data itself is not owned by the string value — it lives elsewhere (typically in a read-only static data segment).

Examples

//"Declaration"
var s string = "Hello"

"another text" // *string

s.data   // *char[] — pointer to bytes
s.len    // 5 — byte length

// Passing around
func get_len[*string s]
    s.len
end

&s print_len // 5
"test" get_len // 4

Fields

Field	Type	Description
`.data`	`*char[]`	Pointer to the underlying C-string bytes
`.len`	`int`	Length in bytes (not characters)

`.data`

Underlying pointer to the C-string (*char[]).

`.len`

Size of the string in bytes.

Internal representation

The string type is a structure available to every compiled program. It is defined as:

struct string
    data *char[]
    len int
end

Storage

String literals are stored in the static data segment of the compiled binary and must have read-only memory protection.

This means:

The bytes are not copied when a string value is passed around.
A string value does not own its data.
Modifying the underlying bytes is undefined behavior.

string type