The Case Against Autodecode

[Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/12/2016 4:52 PM, Marco Leise wrote:
> I'd like 'string' to mean valid UTF-8 in D as far as the
> encoding goes. A filename should not be a 'string'.

I would have agreed with you in the past, but more and more it just doesn't seem 
practical. UTF-8 is dirty in the real world, and D code will have to deal with it.

By dealing with it I mean not crash, throw exceptions, or other tantrums when 
encountering it. Unless it matters, it should pass the invalid encodings along 
unmolested and without comment. For example, if you're searching for 'a' in a 
UTF-8 string, what does it matter if there are invalid encodings in that string?

For filenames/paths in particular, having redone the file/path code in Phobos, I 
realized that invalid encodings are completely immaterial.