/*
 *  This file is part of the Jikes RVM project (http://jikesrvm.org).
 *
 *  This file is licensed to You under the Eclipse Public License (EPL);
 *  You may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You
 *  may obtain a copy of the License at
 *
 *      http://www.opensource.org/licenses/eclipse-1.0.php
 *
 *  See the COPYRIGHT.txt file distributed with this work for information
 *  regarding copyright ownership.
 */
package org.mmtk.vm;

import org.vmmagic.pragma.Uninterruptible;


@Uninterruptible public abstract class Strings {
  /**
   * Log a message.
   *
   * @param c character array with message starting at index 0
   * @param len number of characters in message
   */
  public abstract void write(char [] c, int len);

  /**
   * Log a thread identifier and a message.
   *
   * @param c character array with message starting at index 0
   * @param len number of characters in message
   */
  public abstract void writeThreadId(char [] c, int len);

  /**
   * Copies characters from the string into the character array.
   * Thread switching is disabled during this method's execution.
   * <p>
   * <b>TODO:</b> There are special memory management semantics here that
   * someone should document.
   *
   * @param src the source string
   * @param dst the destination array
   * @param dstBegin the start offset in the desination array
   * @param dstEnd the index after the last character in the
   * destination to copy to
   * @return the number of characters copied.
   */
  public abstract int copyStringToChars(String src, char [] dst,
      int dstBegin, int dstEnd);
}