Re: [boost] [General] Always treat std::strings as UTF-8?

Subject: Re: [boost] [General] Always treat std::strings as UTF-8?
From: Alexander Lamaison (awl03_at_[hidden])
Date: 2011-01-14 10:14:25

On Fri, 14 Jan 2011 17:04:19 +0200, Peter Dimov wrote:

> Alexander Lamaison wrote:
>> Presumably, Mac OS X returns paths in the same encoding as it expects to 
>> receive them?  So just passing them around and eventually back to the OS 
>> will always work regardless of encoding?
> 
> Yes, it does (because it's UTF-8). It doesn't work on Windows in general - 
> if the file name contains characters that can't be represented in the 
> default code page, they are replaced by something else, typically '?', 
> sometimes the character without the acute mark. Either way, the name can no 
> longer be used to refer to the original file. 

Only if you modify the string!  Windows can't give you a narrow string in
the first place that it can't accept back.  Even if you up-convert it to
something like UTF-16 but don't modify it, you should always be able to
down-convert back to the default codepage if you didn't modify the string.