The Case Against Autodecode

[Nick Treleaven via Digitalmars-d]

On Friday, 13 May 2016 at 00:47:04 UTC, Jack Stouffer wrote:
> If you're serious about removing auto-decoding, which I think 
> you and others have shown has merits, you have to the THE 
> SIMPLEST migration path ever, or you will kill D. I'm talking a 
> simple press of a button.

char[] is always going to be unsafe for UTF-8. I don't think we 
can remove it or auto-decoding, only discourage use of it. We 
need a String struct IMO, without length or indexing. Its front 
can do autodecoding, and it has a ubyte[] raw() property too. 
(Possibly the byte length of front can be cached for use in 
popFront, assuming it was faster). This would be a gradual 
transition.