----- Original Message ----
From: Beman Dawes <bdawes@acm.org> To: Boost Developers List <boost@lists.boost.org> Sent: Wed, July 20, 2011 11:27:38 PM Subject: [boost] [C++0x] Emulate C++0x char16_t, char32_t, std::u16string, and std::u32string
I'm starting to fold in Boost.Filesystem support for the new C++0x character types. Support is emulated for compilers and standard libraries not currently supporting the 0x features. The emulation is working fine, with tests passing on Windows for GCC 4.5 and 4.6, and VC++ 8, 9, and 10. Haven't tested on non-Windows systems yet.
This is the same emulation approach Microsoft ships in VC++ 10.
It seems to me that all Boost libraries that want to emulate these 0X features should use the a unified approach. Otherwise we could get into a situation where libraries A and B worked fine in isolation, but had symbol or ODR clashes when used together.
The header I'm using is attached. I propose to place this in <boost/string_0x.hpp> rather than, say, <boost/filesystem/detail/string_0x.hpp>, and providing a simple doc page.
Does this make sense?
--Beman
No, you can't emulate them. Emulation of char16_t/char32_t is useless for any real use. You can't create working std::basic_ostringstream<char16_t> stream; Because stream << 1245 would not work due to lack of std::locale facets. You can't create requires facets as for example they are specialized in many standard libraries. Even existing Microsoft's VC2010 does not work if you compile application with /MD or /MDd Note: char, wchar_t, char16_t and char32_t are much more then basic types that can be distinguished, they bring character information with them. If you want to represent a UTF-16 or UTF-32 code unit just use uint16_t or uint32_t, like for example ICU does for UChar and Qt does for QChar, but this isn't something that suppose to work with standard library in place where characters exists. Also for File system? Please, don't try make it more complicated then it is now. You want to make boost.filesystem better? Make it use UTF-8 on Windows by default and drop all "wide-crap" (sorry windows users). All operating systems around (with one exception) use char * API and one operating system uses utf-16/wchar_t API. So adding arbitrary character that no operating system uses seems to be waste of effort. I **personally** don't see any benefit in adding char16_t/char32_t emulation to the Boost and specialty to the Boost.Filesystem. Today Boost.Filesystem has enough problems besides char16_t/char32_t. Artyom Beilis -------------- CppCMS - C++ Web Framework: http://cppcms.sf.net/ CppDB - C++ SQL Connectivity: http://cppcms.sf.net/sql/cppdb/