Re: State of the compiler market

["J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr>]

Le 30/06/2017 à 09:18, Dmitry A. Kazakov a écrit :
> Encoding must be a part of the string type. This is essential for
> dealing with OS/API bindings. E.g. an UTF-8 string must provide a view
> of an array of octets (for OS/API calls) and a view of an array of code
> points (for the application). The second view must constitute a class.
> We don't need explicit conversions between string types.
>
This is your opinion. I don't see why it must constitute a class. I tend
to use the simplest structure available for my need, hence avoid tagged
types unless they are the most appropriate structure.

Moreover, encodings are useful only at the boundary between the
application and the external world, internal processing should use the
internal form, i.e. characters (characters are the abstract notion to
which a code point is associated). Therefore, conversions at the
boundary seem quite appropriate

> But the point is that the language should not have string types at all.
> The type system should be capable to define things as described above at
> the library level.
Then you should be happy. There is absolutely no magic about String in
Ada (as opposed to most other languages), and string types ARE simply
defined in a package (namely Standard). They are known to the compiler
only for attributes that return a string type.

-- 
J-P. Rosen
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