Re: [boost] Strings tagged with their character set

From: Joseph Gauterin (joseph.gauterin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-09-25 09:26:20

> > If you change state_type in the char_traits, you'd be able to
> > differentiate the various basic_string types and include information
> > about the character encoding without writing a whole lot of new code.
>
> Thanks for the suggestion.  I need to learn some more about this corner
> of "namespace std", clearly, before I go and re-invent something.
IIRC, some of the non-const std::basic_string methods aren't suitable
for handling variable width encodings like utf8 and utf16 - non-const
operator[] in paticular returns a reference to the character type - a
big problem if you want to assign a value > 0x7F (i.e. a character
that uses 2 or more bytes).

I've noticed that there are frequent requests/proposals for some sort
of boost unicode/string encoding library. I've thought about the
problem and it seems to big for one person to handle in their spare
time - perhaps a group of us should get together to discuss working on
one? I'd be happy to participate.