The Case Against Autodecode

[Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d]

On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 13:01:11 Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On 05/31/2016 12:45 PM, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 11:07:09 Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> >> On 5/31/16 3:56 AM, Walter Bright wrote:
> >>> If there is an abstraction for strings that is efficient, consistent,
> >>> useful, and hides the fact that it is UTF, I am not aware of it.
> >>
> >> It's been mentioned several times: a string type that does not offer
> >> range primitives; instead it offers explicit primitives (such as
> >> byCodeUnit, byCodePoint, byGrapheme etc) that yield appropriate ranges.
> >
> > Not exactly. Such a string type does not hide the fact that it's UTF.
> > Rather, it forces you to deal with the fact that its UTF.
>
> How is that different from what I said? -- Andrei

My point was that Walter was stating that you can't have a type that hides
the fact that it's dealing with Unicode while still being efficient, whereas
you mentioned a proposal for a type that does not hide the fact that
it's dealing with Unicode. So, you weren't really responding with a type
that rebutted Walter's statement. Rather, you responded with a type that
attempts to make its Unicode nature more explicit than immutable(char)[].

- Jonathan M Davis