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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Unicode strings?
From: lester@lsces.co.uk (Lester Caine)

Crypto Compress wrote:
>>>> 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 ...
>
> Quote #1: "You can request 64 or 32 bits with the --with-library-bits= option, ..."
> Quote #2: "Strings are represented as UChar * as the base string type."
>
> http://userguide.icu-project.org/icufaq#TOC-How-do-I-get-32--or-64-bit-versions-of-the-ICU-libraries-
>
> String length is platform dependent.

It is not only PHP that has hidden gems of information buried in the 
documentation, but ...
"For UTF-8 strings, ICU normally uses (const) char * pointers and int32_t lengths"

The question here is how UTF-8 default works in ICU as we want to actually avoid 
using UChar altogether using UText instead - I think?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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