Re: strange behaviour of utf-8 files

[Georg Bauhaus <rm.dash-bauhaus@futureapps.de>]

On 17.11.13 21:38, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> The problem is that the common part (ASCII) is sufficient for Ada
> programming while the varying part is subtle enough to cause difficult to
> detect bugs in string literals. Bugs that cannot be detected by the
> compiler.

UTF-8 can actually be so checked (and is checked by typical implementations)
that accidentally mistaking some octets of a string literal for Latin-1
coded characters is impossible: this is a consequence of the design of
UTF-8, as you know: the {1}+0 prefix rules.

Actually, a compiler---GNAT having a helpful spell checker already---could
detect occurrences in string literals of

    String'(N   => Character'Val (195),
            N+1 => Character'Val (179))

as very likely being the valid UTF-8 sequence representing "ó". It will
then emit a warning saying that source text might be UTF-8 rather than
Latin-1, and suggest a compiler switch accordingly. Of course, the presence
of a BOM can add further support to this warning.