Re: utf

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

>> > What is the length of a string?
>> When is that relevant?
> When you're trying to display one on a screen, or print one on paper.

To display a string you don't just need its length, you need the actual
bitmap representation, and getting info such as length is trivial once
you've rendered the string into a bitmap (finding relevant fonts, etc..).

Also, when it comes to display you never really care about the length of
the string: you typically care about its pixel-width and
pixel-height instead.

> When you've been asked to find the longest/shortest string from a list.
> When you've been asked to sort a list of strings by length.

Again, if it's for display purposes, you'll want to use the actually
pixel-width instead, which again introduces the need to figure out which
font (or set of fonts since many/most fonts only cover a subset of
Unicode) to use, etc...

> Or in other words, basically every time you do anything with the string
> at all other than blindly byte-copying it to a different place in memory.

Your experience is quite different from mine.


        Stefan