Re: [boost] Idea to support unicode strings

From: Tomas Pecholt (pecholt_at_[hidden])
Date: 2006-10-01 04:33:56

Nils Springob wrote:
>> However it isn't basic_string and it means it is isolated from the rest of 
>> standard library. In perfect world I would expect to read/write utf_strings 
>> from std::streams in the same way it is provided for std::string i.e. all the
>> operations like operator>>, getline and so on should be usable on 
>> utf_strings.
> It is always possible to access the basic_string<> data by calling raw()! The
> standard requires character access, which can't be implemented efficiently for
> utf8 and utf16 encoded strings.

I see! I have some tips to your code:

1) insert(size_type, uint32_t &). This doesn't compile without using 
boost. It should be written as insert(size_type, utf32_char &)

2) I have also other compiler problem on line
static const size_type npos = string_type::npos;
With my msvc8 I Am getting error C2057: expected constant expression. I 
don't understand because string_type::npos IS constant expression. Do 
you know what's the problem here?

3) In append, assign and ctor members you should call raw_string.reserve 
before appending characters to be more effective. I know that sometimes 
the exact number of characters (code units) isn't known but it's better 
to reserve at least the minimal count.

4) This is rather cosmetic. I think something like ustring<windows_1252> 
would be both more tabular and more boost-way than current 
windows_1252_string. You can do it easily by uniting all your 
utf*_traits classes into one template and specializing on predefined 
struct tags.

Regards
Tomas