The Case Against Autodecode

[Vladimir Panteleev via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 16:34:49 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> On Monday, 30 May 2016 at 16:25:20 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> D1 -> D2 was a vastly more disruptive change than getting rid 
>> of auto-decoding would be.
>
> Don't be so sure. All string handling code would become broken, 
> even if it appears to work at first.

Assuming silent breakage is on the table, what would be broken, 
really?

Code that must intentionally count or otherwise operate code 
points, sure. But how much of all string handling code is like 
that?

Perhaps it would be worth trying to silently remove autodecoding 
and seeing how much of Phobos breaks, as an experiment. Has this 
been tried before?

(Not saying this is a route we should take, but it doesn't seem 
to me that it will break "all string handling code" either.)