> I don't really see how that's a hack. Because if you switch encoding you need to modify the code. All languages actually supporting utf-8 use the very same f

> I don't really see how that's a hack. Because if you switch encoding you need to modify the code. All languages actually supporting utf-8 use the very same functions whatever the encoding is, eventually you simply need to declare that you're using utf-8 but that's all.