Re: Internal visibility

[Han-Wen Nienhuys]

Ludovic Courtès escreveu:
>>> Guile's string API is aiming not to be 8-bit-assuming, and I would
>>> guess from the code above that the C++ string class is 8-bit-assuming.
>> Sorry, I guess I don't understand. What _is_the assumption for
>> representing strings in GUILE?
> 
> Strings in Guile will eventually be sequences of Unicode code points (as
> opposed to "bytes"), which can be represented in a variety of different
> ways (UTF-8, UCS-4, etc.).  How Guile represents strings and whether
> this representation "changes dynamically" (as you suggested) should not
> be exposed to the applications in order to leave as much freedom as
> possible to Guile's implementation strategy.

I think that a sequence of Unicode code points this is a somewhat
limited view of how strings should be used.  Among others, the
implication is that programs cannot rely on being able to index a
string in O(1) time (since the string might be UTF-x encoded).

What do I use if I want to have guaranteed O(1) indexing -that is- if
I want to manipulate strings of bytes?  

How would I read the contents of a binary file without jumping through 
encoding hoops?

FWIW, I think ttn's suggestion is an excellent one.

-- 
 Han-Wen Nienhuys - address@hidden - http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen