Inconsitency

[Dicebot]

On Sunday, 13 October 2013 at 12:36:20 UTC, nickles wrote:
> Why does <string>.length return the number of bytes and not the
> number of UTF-8 characters, whereas <wstring.>length and
> <dstring>.length return the number of UTF-16 and UTF-32
> characters?
>
> Wouldn't it be more consistent to have <string>.length return 
> the
> number of UTF-8 characters as well (instead of having to use
> std.utf.count(<string>)?

Because `length` must be O(1) operation for built-in arrays and 
for UTF-8 strings it would require storing additional length 
field making it binary incompatible with other array types.