3 ms·

Perhaps, but then wouldn't the issue just be that iswdigit() is practically useless, rather than that it 'requires' (it doesn't) using a type that may only be 1

Perhaps, but then wouldn't the issue just be that iswdigit() is practically useless, rather than that it 'requires' (it doesn't) using a type that may only be 16-bit? Even on systems where wchar_t is 32-bit, that isn't a guarantee that the extended character set supported by iswxxx() includes Unicode. (It also requires your OS to support a large number of locales, which is unlikely. The vast majority of iswxxx() functions are broken on the vast majority of Linux installs.)

jmillikin 4y ago
> Perhaps, but then wouldn't the issue just be that iswdigit() > is practically useless, rather than that it 'requires' (it doesn't) > using a type that may only be 16-bit? In my opinion yes, though obviously opinions vary. When Unicode expanded beyond the BMP, the decision by some platforms (Windows, Java, JavaScript) to represent "wide characters" as 16-bit integers became a problem. APIs that accept strings rather than "characters" could be adjusted from UCS-2 to UTF-16, but anything shaped like iswdigit() needed to be reconsidered. The thing about iswdigit() and friends is that it does mostly do what people expect so long as (1) they don't need to write cross-platform code and (2) their localization needs are simple (BMP only), which is true of like 95% of software, so it can be hard to convince anyone to stop using it in favor of more robust solutions like libicu.