[boost] Re: Re: Re: New design proposal for boost::filesystem

From: Rainer Deyke (rainerd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-08-22 22:27:51

Stefan Seefeld wrote:
> Isn't it abusive to force utf-8 into a std::string ? While it is
> technically possible the semantics isn't quite the same. operator
> [] (size_t i) wouldn't return the i'th character any more, at
> least not for characters outside the ascii range.

I don't think so.  In C and C++, the type 'char' represents not only a text
character, but also a byte of binary data.  For example, when using the
iostream library to read binary files, the data will be read as a sequence
of 'char's.  'std::string' is the most useful container for blocks of binary
data, largely because of the stringstream classes.

Utf-8 is just a special case of binary data.

-- 
Rainer Deyke - rainerd_at_[hidden] - http://eldwood.com