Re: [Boost-users] [boost][exception] Wide-character design considerations

Subject: Re: [Boost-users] [boost][exception] Wide-character design considerations
From: Rainer Deyke (rainerd_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-06-24 22:55:22

On 6/24/2010 09:31, John Dlugosz wrote:
> No.  The narrow form should be encoded based on the currently
> selected locale's settings.  That is, after all, the whole point of
> having it.  Other functions you pass it to will be expecting that.

Which other function?  Yours?  Mine?  The standard libraries?  Third
party libraries?

My functions, at least, use utf-8 exclusively.  The standard library
generally (but not always) treats strings as opaque blobs of binary
data.  Third party libraries vary, but most of the libraries I use
assume or at least support utf-8.

Using locale-dependent character encodings is just plain broken.  It
won't work if you deal with characters that are not in the current
locale.  It won't work if you save a file in one locale and load it from
another.  It won't work if you compile with one locale and run on the other.

Unfortunately, wide strings are /also/ broken.  On some platforms, they
are utf-32.  On some platforms, they are utf-16.  On some platforms they
are UCS-2, and you have no way to encode characters past the BMP.  You
also have to worry about byte-order issues.

Utf-8 is the only sane way to deal with international text.

-- 
Rainer Deyke - rainerd_at_[hidden]