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From: "Jeffrey R. Carter" <spam.jrcarter.not@spam.not.acm.org>
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Subject: Why UTF-8 (was Re: Lower bounds of Strings)
Date: Sat, 9 Jan 2021 15:52:39 +0100
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On 1/9/21 3:31 AM, Randy Brukardt wrote:
> The default String should be UTF-8, the others should be reserved for
> special cases (interfacing in particular). You don't want the default string
> type to restrict the contents, and you don't want it to waste a lot of
> space.

I don't understand this. I presume there was a time when the extra complexity of 
UTF-8 was a reasonable price to pay for the larger than 1-byte character range 
it provided, and there may be systems where it still makes sense, but with most 
systems these days having GB of memory and TB of storage, the simplicity of 
using 2 bytes per character seems worth the wasted space. On my 4-yr-old 
computer I could do everything with 4-byte characters and not have a problem.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Unix and C are the ultimate computer viruses."
Richard Gabriel
99