Learning Zig

I have been leaning zig over the last year or so, and I have been using it for some smaller and larger projects. And i must say I’m quite impressed with the language. It’s a very well designed language and it has a lot of features that make it a pleasure to use. It’s one of the first languages I have used where the full standard library is available even on embedded targets and where it very easy to write cross platform code.

Here a some notes I have taken while learning zig, and some of the things I have learned along the way.

Import

In zig when you create a new file it’s “wrapped” in a struct:

MyType.zig:

const MyType = @This(); // References to the struct of MyType.zig
field1 = "Hello World";

fn doStuff(self: MyType): []u8 {
    return self.field1;
}

main.zig:

const MyType = @import("MyType.zig");
std.debug.print(MyType.field1);
const my_namespace = @import("my_namespace.zig");

String types:

  • [:0]const: Pointer to zero terminated string and a length. (zig “string”).
  • [*:0]const u8: Pointer to a zero terminated string (fx. what std.os.args returns an array of).
  • []const u8: Pointer and a length (zig slice).
const str: [:0]const u8 = "Hello World";
const strPtr: [*:0]const u8 = str.ptr;
const strSlice: []const u8 = str[0..str.len];
const strPtrToSlice: []const u8 = std.mem.span(strPtr);

// To convert from a non-zero terminated string we need to allocate so we can add the zero
var gpa = std.heap.GeneralPurposeAllocator(.{}){};
const allocator = gpa.allocator();
defer _ = gpa.deinit();
const sliceToZeroTerminatedStr = try allocator.dupeZ(u8, strSlice);

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