>>(...) When it's phrased as "truncates to 8 >> bits" it sounds so simple, surely all we need >> to do is not truncate to 8 bits right? >> >> The problem is, what encoding should it pick? >> UTF8, 16, 32, EBDIC? (...) >> >> One sensible suggestion many people have made >> is that H98 file IO should use the locale >> encoding and do Unicode/String <-> locale >> conversion. (...)
I'm really afraid of solutions where the behavior of your program changes with an environment variable that not everybody has configured properly, or even know to exist. > Wouldn't it be sensible not to use the H98 file > I/O operations at all anymore with binary files? > A Char represents a Unicode code point value and > is not the right data type to use to represent a > byte from a binary stream. That seems nice, we would not have to create a "wide char" type just for Unicode. This topic made me search the net for that nice quote: "Explanations exist: they have existed for all times, for there is always an easy solution to every problem — neat, plausible and wrong." (See: en.wikiquote.org/wiki/H._L._Mencken That guy has many quotes worth reading.) Strings as char lists is a very good example of that. It's simple and clean, but strings are not char lists in any reasonable sense. Best, Maurício _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
