X-Git-Url: http://info.iut-bm.univ-fcomte.fr/pub/gitweb/simgrid.git/blobdiff_plain/ad0cb80ebff7603232ec1621d9b6cfa1ea3471f6..4667db33a753d88cbcd186f191fb1e65f49f4bd6:/include/xbt/string.hpp

diff --git a/include/xbt/string.hpp b/include/xbt/string.hpp
index 30d6737a70..633162a1f2 100644
--- a/include/xbt/string.hpp
+++ b/include/xbt/string.hpp
@@ -7,7 +7,8 @@
 #ifndef SIMGRIC_XBT_STRING_HPP
 #define SIMGRIC_XBT_STRING_HPP
 
-#ifdef HAVE_MC
+#include "src/internal_config.h"
+#if HAVE_MC
 
 #include <stdexcept>
 #include <cstddef>
@@ -30,10 +31,21 @@ struct string_data {
 
 /** A std::string with well-known representation
  *
- *  This is a (incomplete) drop-in replacement for std::string.
+ *  This is a (incomplete) drop-in replacement for `std::string`.
+ *  It has a fixed POD representation (`simgrid::xbt::string_data`)
+ *  which can be used to easily read the string content from another
+ *  process.
  *
- *  This is used for cross-process access to strings
- *  (when the MC is enabled).
+ *  The internal representation of a `std::string` is private.
+ *  We could add some code to read this for a given implementation.
+ *  However, even if we focus on GNU libstdc++ with Itanium ABI
+ *  GNU libstdc++ currently has two different ABIs
+ *
+ *  * the pre-C++11 is a pointer to a ref-counted
+ *    string-representation (with support for COW);
+ *
+ *  * the [C++11-conforming implementation](https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-5/changes.html)
+ *    does not use refcouting/COW but has a small string optimization.
  */
 XBT_PUBLIC_CLASS string : private string_data {
   static const char NUL;
@@ -285,4 +297,4 @@ typedef std::string string;
 
 #endif
 
-#endif
\ No newline at end of file
+#endif