What's left for 1.0?

[Daniel Keep]

Olli Aalto wrote:
> Marcin Kuszczak wrote:
>> But if Walter is not happy enough with this implementation now maybe
>> there
>> should be at least added alias in object.d:
>> alias char[] string;
>>
> 
> I'm not an expert on these things, but while reading Daniel Keep's
> excellent article on text in D, I got an idea about the alias
> declaration. Why not have something like this in either object.d or
> std.string?
> 
> version(UTF8)
> {
>     alias char[] string;
> }
> version(UTF16)
> {
>     alias wchar[] string;
> }
> version(UTF32)
> {
>     alias dchar[] string;
> }
> 
> It would default to UTF8, if not defined on command line. This way
> everyone could use the version their application requires.
> 
> Am I way out of line here? As I said I'm not an expert and don't know if
> that just creates more problems.
> 
> O.

Imagine you compile the standard library with -version=UTF8.  Let's take
the following function:

> int find(string s, dchar c) { ... }

This would be compiled as:

> int find(char[] s, dchar c) { ... }

You then write some code to use that:

> ...
> string attr = "key:value";
> ...
> auto pos = find(attr, ':');
> ...

For whatever reason, your program will run optimally using UTF-32.

> dmd -version=UTF32 app.d

But that means that in the standard library, "string" is really
"char[]", and in your program it's "dchar[]".  You try to link against
the standard library, and the linker barfs (quite correctly) since the
function you're using doesn't exist.

It's a nice idea, but with the current object formats, and the way
conditional compilation works, I don't think it's actually possible.

	-- Daniel

P.S.  See sig.

-- 
Unlike Knuth, I have neither proven or tried the above; it may not even
make sense.

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