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SubjectRe: unicode (char as abstract data type)
Date
Raul Miller writes:
> Albert D. Cahalan <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> wrote:

>> Think about the consequences of UTF-8 at the system call level:
>> Every system call that uses text must be first converted to UTF-8.
>> This burden is with us forever. Meanwhile, Windows and MacOS can
>> avoid conversion costs after the world converts to UCS2.
>
> If there were any reason to do it, you could create a personality which
> used (for example) UTF-16 instead. With a bit of work, you could write
> a libc which could work properly with either the UTF-8 or the UTF-16
> personality (a crude one, might perhaps use a boot mechanism which
> points at a different ld.so, depending).
>
> At this point, your applications wouldn't know what internal
> representation the kernel used.

Yes. That is a Good Thing, because the kernel should use the
fastest encoding for internal operations.

> Anyways, point is: you can change the interfaces, if you decide
> it's worth the work.

By itself, there is not enough reason to change the interfaces.
Most ports will need to change the interfaces for 64-bit file
sizes anyway though, so the changes could go together.

> However, the last thing we want to do is implement utf-16 in the
> kernel because microsoft/apple says that they're going to someday.

Microsoft already did. Library support lets app developers choose
to use or ignore that support as they desire. As time passes, more
will choose to use the support.

You can hate Microsoft _and_ steal their best ideas.
(some of which were stolen from VMS, the MacOS, etc.)

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