Expand the introduction to the ffi module.

We describe the representation of C strings, and the purpose of
OsString/OsStr.

Part of #29354

Author: federicomenaquintero

src/libstd/ffi/mod.rs

@@ -8,7 +8,106 @@
 // option. This file may not be copied, modified, or distributed
 // except according to those terms.
 
-//! Utilities related to FFI bindings.
+//! This module provides utilities to handle C-like strings.  It is
+//! mainly of use for FFI (Foreign Function Interface) bindings and
+//! code that needs to exchange C-like strings with other languages.
+//!
+//! # Overview
+//!
+//! Rust represents owned strings with the [`String`] type, and
+//! borrowed slices of strings with the [`str`] primitive.  Both are
+//! always in UTF-8 encoding, and may contain nul bytes in the middle,
+//! i.e. if you look at the bytes that make up the string, there may
+//! be a `0` among them.  Both `String` and `str` know their length;
+//! there are no nul terminators at the end of strings like in C.
+//!
+//! C strings are different from Rust strings:
+//!
+//! * **Encodings** - C strings may have different encodings.  If
+//! you are bringing in strings from C APIs, you should check what
+//! encoding you are getting.  Rust strings are always UTF-8.
+//!
+//! * **Character width** - C strings may use "normal" or "wide"
+//! characters, i.e. `char` or `wchar_t`, respectively.  The C
+//! standard leaves the actual sizes of those types open to
+//! interpretation, but defines different APIs for strings made up of
+//! each character type.  Rust strings are always UTF-8, so different
+//! Unicode characters will be encoded in a variable number of bytes
+//! each.  The Rust type [`char`] represents a '[Unicode
+//! scalar value]', which is similar to, but not the same as, a
+//! '[Unicode code point]'.
+//!
+//! * **Nul terminators and implicit string lengths** - Often, C
+//! strings are nul-terminated, i.e. they have a `0` character at the
+//! end.  The length of a string buffer is not known *a priori*;
+//! instead, to compute the length of a string, C code must manually
+//! call a function like `strlen()` for `char`-based strings, or
+//! `wcslen()` for `wchar_t`-based ones.  Those functions return the
+//! number of characters in the string excluding the nul terminator,
+//! so the buffer length is really `len+1` characters.  Rust strings
+//! don't have a nul terminator, and they always know their length.
+//!
+//! * **No nul characters in the middle of the string** - When C
+//! strings have a nul terminator character, this usually means that
+//! they cannot have nul characters in the middle — a nul character
+//! would essentially truncate the string.  Rust strings *can* have
+//! nul characters in the middle, since they don't use nul
+//! terminators.
+//!
+//! # Representations of non-Rust strings
+//!
+//! [`CString`] and [`CStr`] are useful when you need to transfer
+//! UTF-8 strings to and from C, respectively:
+//!
+//! * **From Rust to C:** [`CString`] represents an owned, C-friendly
+//! UTF-8 string:  it is valid UTF-8, it is nul-terminated, and has no
+//! nul characters in the middle.  Rust code can create a `CString`
+//! out of a normal string (provided that the string doesn't have nul
+//! characters in the middle), and then use a variety of methods to
+//! obtain a raw `*mut u8` that can then be passed as an argument to C
+//! functions.
+//!
+//! * **From C to Rust:** [`CStr`] represents a borrowed C string; it
+//! is what you would use to wrap a raw `*const u8` that you got from
+//! a C function.  A `CStr` is just guaranteed to be a nul-terminated
+//! array of bytes; the UTF-8 validation step only happens when you
+//! request to convert it to a `&str`.
+//!
+//! [`OsString`] and [`OsStr`] are useful when you need to transfer
+//! strings to and from operating system calls.  If you need Rust
+//! strings out of them, they can take care of conversion to and from
+//! the operating system's preferred form for strings — of course, it
+//! may not be possible to convert all valid operating system strings
+//! into valid UTF-8; the `OsString` and `OsStr` functions let you know
+//! when this is the case.
+//!
+//! * [`OsString`] represents an owned string in whatever
+//! representation the operating system prefers.  In the Rust standard
+//! library, various APIs that transfer strings to/from the operating
+//! system use `OsString` instead of plain strings.  For example,
+//! [`env::var_os()`] is used to query environment variables; it
+//! returns an `Option<OsString>`.  If the environment variable exists
+//! you will get a `Some(os_string)`, which you can *then* try to
+//! convert to a Rust string.  This yields a [`Result<>`], so that
+//! your code can detect errors in case the environment variable did
+//! not in fact contain valid Unicode data.
+//!
+//! * [`OsStr`] represents a borrowed reference to a string in a format that
+//! can be passed to the operating system.  It can be converted into
+//! an UTF-8 Rust string slice in a similar way to `OsString`.
+//!
+//! [`String`]: ../string/struct.String.html
+//! [`str`]: ../primitive.str.html
+//! [`char`]: ../primitive.char.html
+//! [Unicode scalar value]: http://www.unicode.org/glossary/#unicode_scalar_value
+//! [Unicode code point]: http://www.unicode.org/glossary/#code_point
+//! [`CString`]: struct.CString.html
+//! [`CStr`]: struct.CStr.html
+//! [`OsString`]: struct.OsString.html
+//! [`OsStr`]: struct.OsStr.html
+//! [`env::set_var()`]: ../env/fn.set_var.html
+//! [`env::var_os()`]: ../env/fn.var_os.html
+//! [`Result<>`]: ../result/enum.Result.html
 
 #![stable(feature = "rust1", since = "1.0.0")]