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

From: Patrick Bennett (patrick.bennett_at_[hidden])
Date: 2004-08-23 09:47:52

Stefan Seefeld wrote:

> Patrick Bennett wrote:
>
>> It should be char* (and std::string) UTF-8 strings throughout for all 
>> platforms - passing as-is for platforms like Linux, and converting 
>> to/from UCS-2 on Windows.  I can't speak for other platforms as I'm 
>> most familiar with Windows and Linux.
>
>
> Isn't it abusive to force utf-8 into a std::string ? 

Abuse is a relative term here.  ;)

> 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.

Correct (kind of), but I'd far prefer that std::string be used than for 
some completely new type to be defined.
For users of boost::filesystem, I can't personally think of a time when 
a user would need to iterate the paths or files a character at a time.
Because of UTF-8's nature, even if a user were to search for something 
like '/', it would still work for find's, [], etc.  UTF-8 maps to 
std::string extremely well. 
I think there is also a fair amount of precendents already set for using 
UTF-8 internally using std::string as the storage mechanism.
UTF-8 strings don't contain embedded nul's (std::string still works for 
that though), ASCII characters remains ASCII characters, and you can 
tell if you're in the middle of a multi-byte sequence.

Since we're talking about filesystem's inability to be used with 
internationalized applications, and you don't think UTF-8/std::string is 
the way to do it, what is your recommendation?

Cheers...
Patrick Bennett