Dave Abrahams wrote:
std::string represents a sequence of "char" objects that happens to be useful for text processing. It can represent a text in any encoding.
The question is how we treat this sequence... And this is a matter of policy and requirements of the library.
I think I agree with Artyom here. *Somebody* has to decide how that datatype will be interpreted when we receive it. Unless we refuse altogether to accept std::string in our interfaces (which sounds like a bad idea to me), why not make the decision that it's UTF-8?
hmmm - why can't we just leave it at "std::string represents a sequence of "char"" and define some derivative class which defines it as a "a refinement of std::string which supports UTF-8 functionality" ? Robert Ramey