string is rarely useful as a function argument

[foobar]

On Wednesday, 28 December 2011 at 19:38:53 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
[snip]
>>
>> I'm all for making string a properly encapsulated type.
>
> In what way would the proposed change improve encapsulation, 
> and why would it even be desirable for such a basic data 
> structure?

I'm not sure what are you asking here. Are you asking what are 
the benefits of encapsulation? This topic was discussed to death 
more than once and I'd suggest searching the NG archives for the 
details. Also, If you hadn't already I'd suggest reading about 
Unicode and its levels of abstraction: code point, code units, 
graphemes, etc...