On Saturday, 28 January 2017 at 19:09:01 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
In D, a `char` is a UTF-8 code unit. Its size is one byte,
exactly and always.
A `char` is not a "character" in the common meaning of the
word. There's a more specialized word for "character" as a
visual unit: grapheme. For example, 'Ä' is a grapheme (a visual
unit, a "character"), but there is no single `char` for it. To
encode 'Ä' in UTF-8, a sequence of multiple code units is used.
...
The elements of a `string` are (immutable) `char`s. That is,
`string` is an array of UTF-8 code units. It's not an array of
graphemes.
A `string`'s .length gives you the number of `char`s in it,
i.e. the number of UTF-8 code units, i.e. the number of bytes.
Very good explanation.
Thank you all for making this clear to me.
