Re: A Valgrind-observant ncurses

[Bill Gray]

Hi Branden,

On 6/20/24 14:00, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> Right.  One approach I saw somewhere in X11 was to double the buffer
> size once it was exceeded.  I seem to remember adding some code to
> reallocate it smaller if usage fell to one-quarter of capacity.  (Not
> half, because then you could have thrash if your callers, probably
> unwittingly, bounced back and forth around your arbitrarily chosen
> buffer size.)

   Yes,  I have such "buffer expansion" code routinely in my code.  I 
usually don't bother much with the shrinkage,  and am simply careful to 
clean up buffers when closing.  But the logic you describe for shrinking 
is sometimes quite helpful.

> I imagine many curses applications never call `printw()` at all.
> Ones that try to stick rigidly to the wide API won't.
>
> printw(3):
>
> NOTES
>       No wide character counterpart functions are defined by the “wide”
>       ncurses configuration nor by any standard.  To format and write a
>       wide‐character string to a curses window, consider using
>       swprintf(3) and waddwstr(3NCURSES) or similar.

   The idea of adding wide-character counterparts was proposed as an 
extension for PDCurses (not Mod)...

https://github.com/wmcbrine/PDCurses/issues/160

   ...and then shot down.  William McBrine was unwilling to add them 
unless they were adopted by X/Open.  (I didn't see a need for them in 
PDCursesMod,  because they don't require access to curses internals.  If 
used,  those functions should be implemented outside the curses library, 
 as sort of a "bolted on" addition.  That way,  you can use them with 
_any_ curses implementation,  instead of just PDCurses or PDCursesMod or 
ncurses.)

-- Bill

> Regards,
> Branden