4 ms·

Perfect is the enemy of good. Or do you think the current mess is better?

• jstimpfle 8mo ago
  std::string _cannot_ be made "always UTF-8". Is that really so contentious? You can still use it to contain UTF-8 data. It is commonly done.
  • jhasse 8mo ago
    I never said always. Just add some new methods for which it has to be UTF-8. All current functions that need an encoding (e.g. text IO) also switch to UTF-8. Of course you could still save arbitrary binary data in it.
    • jstimpfle 8mo ago
      > That's where the standard should come in and say something like "starting with C++26 char is always 1 byte and signed. std::string is always UTF-8" Done, fixed unicode in C++. > I never said always Yes you totally did. And regarding "add some new methods for which it has to be UTF-8", there is no need at all to add UTF-8 methods to std::string. It would be a bad idea. UTF-8 is not bound to a particular type (or C++ type). It works on _any_ byte sequence.
      • jhasse 8mo ago
        You're right, sorry. Good point, so maybe the standard should just add some functions that take std::string_view. Definitely not add a whole new class like std::u8string ...