Re: [boost] RE [filesystem][cygwin] Standard conformance for wide characters

Subject: Re: [boost] RE [filesystem][cygwin] Standard conformance for wide characters
From: Emil Dotchevski (emildotchevski_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-02-05 20:28:52

On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 5:04 PM, David Abrahams <dave_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>
> on Thu Feb 05 2009, frederic.bron-AT-alcan.com wrote:
>
>>> I've decided not to attempt support for Cygwin in the next version of
>>> Boost.Filesystem.
>>
>> I have posted your comments on the cygwin mailing list and post the answer below. It
>> says that cygwin is not using the GNU C library but newlib which does not have the
>> full set of wide character
>> functions.
>> Any idea how to help newlib get the missing functions?
>
> Implement them?
>
> Maybe it's too facile an answer, but I can't think of anything else...

It seems to me that it is very difficult to implement complete wide
character support. The thing is, all that boost::filesystem needs is
std::wstring (right?), and std::wstring needs only a handful of wide
character functions. That subset should be trivial to implement, and
then it's just a matter of whether the rest of the standard library
implementation can be configured to enable std::wstring only.

I still wish filesystem used utf-8 instead but oh well. :)

Emil Dotchevski
Reverge Studios, Inc.
http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode