Don't have MarshalText() return error

[JeanMertz]

Right now, you can use String() to get the string representation of the ID. However, if you don't want the overhead of casting the byte slice into a string, you have to use MarshalText(), which returns an error, that – as far as I can see – will always be nil, since the buffer size cannot be changed by the user and will always be set correctly.

For a better user experience, I would propose either making this change:

- func (id ULID) MarshalText() ([]byte, error)
+ func (id ULID) MarshalText() []byte

or to add a new Bytes() method, equal to String().

[peterbourgon]

The MarshalText method is designed to implement the encoding.TextMarshaler interface, which dictates that method signature.

[JeanMertz]

Ah yes, of course. What about adding Bytes() to the API? Similar to KSUID.

[peterbourgon]

No objection there. @tsenart?

[tsenart]

SGTM

…

On 29. May 2018, at 16:59, Peter Bourgon ***@***.***> wrote: Reopened #23. — You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub, or mute the thread.

[tsenart]

As per the KSUID, Bytes() would not return the bytes corresponding to the text representation of the ULID, it would return the in-memory byte representation. That's not what you want and making it return the text representation is counter intuitive IMO.

So I suggest we do nothing further here. Your ulid is just one bs, _ := id.MarshalText() away.