Making all strings UTF ranges has some risk of WTF

[Rainer Deyke]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Arrays of char and wchar are not quite generic - they are definitely UTF
> strings.

A 'char' is a single utf-8 code unit.  A 'char[]' is (or should be) a
generic array of utf-8 code units.  Sometimes these code units line up
to form valid unicode code points, sometimes they don't.

If you want a data type that always contains a valid utf-8 string, don't
call it 'char[]'.  It's misleading, it breaks generic code, and it
renders built-in arrays useless for when you actually want an array of
utf-8 code units.  It's the same mistake as std::vector<bool> in C++,
but much worse.


-- 
Rainer Deyke - rainerd at eldwood.com