Re: UTF-8 Output and "-gnatW8"

["G.B." <bauhaus@futureapps.invalid>]

On 30.03.16 00:35, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> "Michael Rohan" <michael@zanyblue.com> wrote in message
> news:6406289c-06a8-46d1-a633-8a1c8a22f79b@googlegroups.com...
> ...
>> It does, however, feel like there is something missing where it's
>> "difficult" to have
>> a Wide_String literal without having to have extra meta data for compiler
>> (-gnatW8)
>> or having a relatively cumbersome concatenation of Wide_Character's based
>> on
>> code points.  BTW, the performance of GNAT for such a concatenated string
>> is
>> pretty dismal.
>
> Both of these are clearly implementation issues as opposed to language
> issues.

Ada users would expect to be able to express numeric literals,
I think, and without any implementation issues whatsoever.
This includes numeric capacity, which they expect
a compiler to report correctly, which implies no implementation
issues when parsing numeric literals.

However —I'm guessing— there is embarrassment lurking behind
handling non-ASCII strings:
it mostly hinges on the pampered, old misunderstanding that char has
eight bits, 7 of which are to be used, and each is fixed to represent
one ASCII character. Hence, trying to handle more than that in
any tool, including a compiler reading a source unit, is
deemed equivalent to tackling a hard problem of number theory.

No one would tolerate that kind of allegation of complexity
of handling contemporary character sets, historically grown as it
may be, for numeric literals of Ada. There is room for compromise
when ISO-ing source character sets, I would hope just like there is
room for compromise when a compiler is not required to solve problems
of number theory when lexing and parsing numeric literals.

C++ has a related problem with string literals. It costs customers'
time and money.