[r6rs-discuss] Re: [Formal] formal comment (ports, characters, strings, Unicode)

From: Abdulaziz Ghuloum <aghuloum>
Date: Mon Mar 19 18:41:55 2007

On Mar 19, 2007, at 6:04 PM, MichaelL_at_frogware.com wrote:

>> Code units (whether UTF-8, UTF-16, UTF-32, or whatever) are
>> bit patterns that are used to encode Unicode scalar values.
>> As programmers and as language designers, one of our guiding
>> principles is that bit patterns don't matter except where
>> they are forced upon us by the external world, typically via
>> i/o.
>
> Or when the abstraction leaks, as string-ref does for UTF-8 and
> UTF-16. Do
> you think that being able to write string-find portably &
> efficiently is
> important?

I must've missed it somewhere, so let me ask the stupid question.
What's the problem with the current draft that prohibits implementing
string-find portably and efficiently? All I can find in the archives
are the following two statements:

On Mar 18, 2007, at 4:25 PM, Jason Orendorff wrote:
> (a) UTF-8 and UTF-16 were designed to facilitate writing efficient
> algorithms. Hiding them hides this facility. R5.92RS leaves the
> programmer with neither (string-find) nor a decent way to implement
> it.

On Mar 18, 2007, at 10:56 PM, Jason Orendorff wrote:
> I won't continue to harp on this, but it bears repeating one more
> time: The current draft API doesn't support a simple, portable,
> efficient (string-find). I find this pretty dismal.

Is string-find here the same as the one briefly described in:
    http://practical-scheme.net/wiliki/schemexref.cgi?string-find

Thanks.

Aziz,,,
Received on Mon Mar 19 2007 - 18:41:37 UTC

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