dchar unicode phobos

[pragma]

In article <e66qqr$1er5$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Johan Granberg says...
>
>pragma wrote:
>> In article <e66hf1$otn$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Johan Granberg says...
>>> That D supports UTF is great, and by using dchar[] all Unicode code 
>>> points can bee used. But phobos does not support dchar[]s adequately. 
>>> (or wchar[]s for that matter) Wouldn't it bee expected of the language 
>>> standard library to support all of the languages string encodings?
>>>
>>> Proposal: add wchar[] and dchar[] versions of the string functions in phobos
>>>
>>> (should this bee filed as a bug?)
>> 
>> Ya know, I never really thought about this, but you're right: D has three
>> character types yet only has full library support for one of them.
>> 
>> If you ask me, there's only so many ways to go about this:
>> 
>> 1. Refactor std.string to use implicit templates
>> 2. Branch std.string into three modules, one for each char type
>> 3. Support all three char types via overloads within std.string
>> 
>> Personally, I like #1 since it would be seamless to implement, and would require
>> almost exactly as much code as is in use now.  The only drawback here is centers
>> around problems with distributing template code in libraries.
>> 
>> Also, do you personally need this kind of support in your project?  Have you
>> looked at Mango?
>> 
>> - EricAnderton at yahoo
>Yes I have needed support for dchar[] with functions like split , 
>splitline and strip in std.string.
>Yes your ways of doing the support looks ok, I would choose 3 thou 
>instead of 1. It may bee because I'm not 100% sure about how 1 would 
>work. (care to give an example)

Sure.  D will now try to implicitly instantiate templates where it finds them.
So you can do this:

/**/ template trim(TChar){
/**/   TChar[] trim(TChar[] src){ /* ... */ }
/**/ }

..and the call to trim will still be as simple as the non-templated version:

/**/ dchar[] foo,bar;
/**/ foo = trim(bar);

So we get to have our cake and eat it too.  The onus is now placed on the
compiler, as it will generate a distinct version of each template as needed.

The astute observer will notice that any array type can be used as a parameter
in the above example.  Proper use of static if() and the 'is' operator can
easily ensure that only char, wchar and dchar are being used.  Template
overloads, while verbose, are another way to go.

- EricAnderton at yahoo