--- Axel Simon <A.Simon@ukc.ac.uk> wrote:
Sure it is necessary to explicitly state what kind of conversion you want when you talk to your C library. So IMHO the only question that really remains is whether readFile, withCString and all other standard I/O function should assume UTF-8 by default or the current locale. I opt for the latter.
Dependence on the current locale is EXTREMELY inconvenient. Imagine that you're writing a Web browser. Your program should be able to read from many octet streams (=connections) each of which can use its own encoding. How would you switch locales in this situation? Having a locale associated with each individual stream is much more convenient. Incidentally, this is what C++ does. Presumably the C++ library designers have learned from mistakes of their predecessors :) -- a. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? HotJobs - Search Thousands of New Jobs http://www.hotjobs.com