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Groups > comp.lang.c > #75836

Re: Is wchar_t really useful?

From James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net>
Newsgroups comp.lang.c
Subject Re: Is wchar_t really useful?
Date 2015-11-12 11:29 -0500
Organization A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID <n22ekd$7og$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References <n1puh2$17n$1@solani.org> <n1q8v2$f03$1@dont-email.me> <n227bt$q5b$1@solani.org> <n229li$hvg$1@dont-email.me> <n22c4n$bjr$1@solani.org>

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On 11/12/2015 10:44 AM, Philipp Klaus Krause wrote:
> On 12.11.2015 16:04, James Kuyper wrote:
> 
>> Why exactly are you interested in how an implementation could weasel out
>> of this requirement? As I understand it, there's a simple process that
>> goes on when designing this part of an implementation of C: choose what
>> extended character sets you want to support, and which encoding. Then
>> choose a single character encoding capable of representing all of those
>> characters, and define wchar_t to be a type big enough to store the
>> representations of any of those characters. Did you have a different
>> implementation design process in mind?
>>
> 
> 1) AFAIK, Windows compilers tend to use a 16-bit wchar_t, and assume
> sequences of wchar_t to be UTF-16-encoded. Thus there are characters
> that don't fit into a wchar_t. How do these implementations get around
> the sandard requirement?

I've no idea - possibly by not conforming to the requirements? I don't
actually use any of this stuff (including Windows) - I'm just telling
you what I can figure out from reading the standard. No program I've
ever written needed any characters outside of the basic character set,
nor any locale other than the "C" locale. Hopefully someone who does
work with this stuff on Windows can answer your question.

> 2) SDCC used to support ISO-8559-1 as character set, but will probably
> move to UTF-8-encoded unicode for the next release. Historically, SDCC
> used an 8-bit wchar_t. Will SDCC have to change to a bigger wchar_t? OR
> could it just continue with the 8-bit wchar_t and have sequences of
> wchar_t UTF-8-encoded?

The standard does not have a macro corresponding to __STDC_UTF_16__ that
applies to wchar_t, so I don't think it could be conforming to use such
an encoding. As far as I know, the right approach would be to use UCS-4
encoding for a 32-bit wchar_t, which, if I understand correctly, is the
requirement for pre#defining __STDC_ISO_10646__.
-- 
James Kuyper

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Thread

Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-09 12:02 +0100
  Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2015-11-09 03:24 -0800
    Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-10 18:33 -0600
      Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2015-11-11 13:56 +1300
  Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-09 09:03 -0500
    Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-12 15:22 +0100
      Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-12 10:04 -0500
        Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-12 16:44 +0100
          Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-12 11:29 -0500
            Re: Is wchar_t really useful? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2015-11-12 09:14 -0800
              Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2015-11-14 11:50 -0800
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2015-11-15 13:44 -0800
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-15 22:50 +0100
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2015-11-15 14:46 -0800
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? raltbos@xs4all.nl (Richard Bos) - 2015-11-17 22:34 +0000
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Tim Rentsch <txr@alumni.caltech.edu> - 2015-11-16 07:25 -0800
            Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-13 17:26 +0100
              Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-13 13:36 -0500
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-13 16:37 -0600
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-13 17:58 -0500
              Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-13 16:01 -0600
                Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-13 23:36 +0100
    Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-12 15:28 +0100
      Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-12 10:26 -0500
    Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-12 14:27 -0600
  Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Lőrinczy Zsigmond <nospam@for.me> - 2015-11-13 05:02 +0100
    Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-13 11:52 +0100
      Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2015-11-13 05:17 -0800
        Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-13 12:58 -0600
        Re: Is wchar_t really useful? supercat@casperkitty.com - 2015-11-13 11:14 -0800
    Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-13 12:45 -0600
  Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-13 18:24 +0100
    Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-13 13:55 -0500
      Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Philipp Klaus Krause <pkk@spth.de> - 2015-11-13 20:39 +0100
        Re: Is wchar_t really useful? James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2015-11-13 14:54 -0500
        Re: Is wchar_t really useful? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2015-11-13 17:04 -0600

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