Add Gtk::SelectionData::get_data_as_vector() and _as_span() ?
Gtk::SelectionData::get_data() returns a guchar*, and you need get_length() to know how much you're allowed to read from there. This is the classic problem of 'pointer plus size' with all the verbosity and pitfalls that entails: now you have to declare 2 variables and call 2 functions, might get the returned size mixed up with some other local variable, and so on. Besides - you have a raw pointer in any case, which is thoroughly discouraged.
As of now, a way to bundle the data and size together in a nicer way - if at the expense of an allocation/copy - is to use get_data_as_string(). However, if the data in the selection is really not characters, you're now using the wrong semantics (see std::byte, etc.). So, this is a slight improvement, but in terms of semantics and self-documenting it's not ideal.
I'd propose 2 improvements here:
- Right now, we could add
get_data_as_vector(), nearly the same code as_as_string()but not implying text-ness. - Once we require C++20, we could add
get_data_as_span() -> std::span, which would avoid the mentioned allocation.
If anyone thinks these are worth doing, I can write the patches.
We might even want to think about using std::byte instead of guchar (unsigned char), but that's a far larger question.
In any case, std::span might come in handy in various other places once glibmm/gtkmm can use C++20 features.