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These functions are currently footgunny when working with pointers to arrays and slices. They just return the stated length of the array/slice without iterating and looking for the first sentinel, even if the array/slice is a sentinel terminated type. From looking at the quite small list of places in the standard library/compiler that this change breaks existing code, the new code looks to be more readable in all cases. The usage of std.mem.span/len was totally unneeded in most of the cases affected by this breaking change. We could remove these functions entirely in favor of other existing functions in std.mem such as std.mem.sliceTo(), but that would be a somewhat nasty breaking change as std.mem.span() is very widely used for converting sentinel terminated pointers to slices. It is however not at all widely used for anything else. Therefore I think it is better to break these few non-standard and potentially incorrect usages of these functions now and at some later time, if deemed worthwhile, finally remove these functions. If we wait for at least a full release cycle so that everyone adapts to this change first, updating for the removal could be a simple find and replace without needing to worry about the semantics.
A general-purpose programming language and toolchain for maintaining robust, optimal, and reusable software.
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The ultimate goal of the Zig project is to serve users. As a first-order effect, this means users of the compiler, helping programmers to write better software. Even more important, however, are the end-users.
Zig is intended to be used to help end-users accomplish their goals. Zig should be used to empower end-users, never to exploit them financially, or to limit their freedom to interact with hardware or software in any way.
However, such problems are best solved with social norms, not with software licenses. Any attempt to complicate the software license of Zig would risk compromising the value Zig provides.
Therefore, Zig is available under the MIT (Expat) License, and comes with a humble request: use it to make software better serve the needs of end-users.
This project redistributes code from other projects, some of which have other licenses besides MIT. Such licenses are generally similar to the MIT license for practical purposes. See the subdirectories and files inside lib/ for more details.