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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Unicode strings?
From: lester@lsces.co.uk (Lester Caine)

Crypto Compress wrote:
>> I'm slowly working through a long list of things relating to unicode strings
>> trying to work out just where the main problems are.
>>
>> The very first problem I hit is ICU's limitation to 32bit string lengths. How
>> does the switch to 64bit string length on 64 bit platforms impinge on this.
>> While I can see the advantage of this particular change, would that also now
>> require our own version of ICU capable of also handling longer strings? This
>> probably falls out in the wash of my next point ...
>
> Where have you found this information? Can you please provide source for this?

This information has been published in several places on the list and in the 
wiki already ...
http://userguide.icu-project.org/strings/utf-8 for the ICU, and the RFC's here 
for 64 bit improvements to PHP ...

>> Currently strings are simply strings? I'm sure we have already had this
>> discussion, and it will be necessary to switch from simple strings to a string
>> object which can handle the intricacies of unicode?
>
> Yes, currently we have so called binary strings (simple bytes, 8 bits).
> No, we should not create an string-object to handle all intricacies of unicode.

How do you provide a holder for the various additional items required for a 
unicode 'object'? While I can see one would get away with calling functions all 
the time on a single string object, having calculated different versions of the 
same string or complex character counts, they need to be cached so they can be 
used again? Or does one maintain each answer in different variables?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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