NAME

Tk_GetUid, Tk_Uid − convert from string to unique identifier

SYNOPSIS

#include <tk.h>
#typedef char ∗Tk_Uid
Tk_Uid
Tk_GetUid(string)

ARGUMENTS

char ∗string (in)
String for which the corresponding unique identifer is desired.

DESCRIPTION

Tk_GetUid returns the unique identifier corresponding to string.  Unique identifiers are similar to atoms in Lisp, and are used in Tk to speed up comparisons and searches.  A unique identifier (type Tk_Uid) is a string pointer and may be used anywhere that a variable of type “char ∗” could be used.  However, there is guaranteed to be exactly one unique identifier for any given string value.  If Tk_GetUid is called twice, once with string a and once with string b, and if a and b have the same string value (strcmp(a, b) == 0), then Tk_GetUid will return exactly the same Tk_Uid value for each call (Tk_GetUid(a) == Tk_GetUid(b)).  This means that variables of type Tk_Uid may be compared directly (x == y) without having to call strcmp.  In addition, the return value from Tk_GetUid will have the same string value as its argument (strcmp(Tk_GetUid(a), a) == 0). 
 

KEYWORDS

atom, unique identifier

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