Re: strange behaviour of utf-8 files

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 18 Nov 2013 09:38:06 +0100, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> 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)

1. The share of illegal UTF-8 sequences is negligible. The one among Ada
programs is even less than that.

2. Latin1 sequences are all legal.

Now, carefully observe that the program in question was dealt with as if it
were encoded in Latin1. So much for your theory.

---------------
P.S. In order to make a point you should take a set of legal [and
practical] Ada programs encoded in X and then reinterpreted in Y. Then you
compare how many of them become:

1. illegal
2. remain legal keeping the semantics
3. remain legal breaking the semantics

The last case is the worst possible scenario, which the OP experienced.

P.P.S. Also important when dealing with the issue of keeping it sane ASCII,
Ada provides a standard package that defines Latin1 characters:

Characters.Latin_1 (RM A.3.3)

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de