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Re: bug#7948: 16-bit wchar_t on Windows and Cygwin
- From: Bruno Haible <bruno at clisp dot org>
- To: Paul Eggert <eggert at cs dot ucla dot edu>
- Cc: Eric Blake <eblake at redhat dot com>, bug-gnulib at gnu dot org, cygwin <cygwin at cygwin dot com>, "bug-coreutils" <bug-coreutils at gnu dot org>
- Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 19:57:06 +0100
- Subject: Re: bug#7948: 16-bit wchar_t on Windows and Cygwin
- References: <201101310304.42975.bruno@clisp.org> <201102021229.04623.bruno@clisp.org> <4D4999BA.2030100@cs.ucla.edu>
Hi Paul,
> > - Define a type 'wwchar_t' on all platforms, equivalent to uint32_t
> > on Windows platforms and to 'wchar_t' otherwise.
>
> As a minor point, would it be OK to call this type
> 'xchar_t' instead? 'x' is the successor to 'w', after all,
> and it can be thought of as an abbreviation for 'eXtended'.
'wwchar_t' means "wide wide character".
In fact it's not really an "extended" character or "complex character".
It's just what POSIX calls a 'wchar_t'.
I like the analogy between strtol and strtoll. In the beginning, people
thought a 'long int' would be enough for everything. Then they discovered
a 'long long int' is needed. The same story repeats itself here with
the "wide characters" which turn out to be not wide enough, and
"wide wide characters" are needed.
> A problem with the 'ww' prefix is that mentally I start thinking
> "World Wide ..."
Indeed this meaning can come to mind, but I think it's not dangerous
since the term "world wide" has no meaning in a programming language.
Bruno
--
In memoriam Carl Friedrich Goerdeler <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Goerdeler>
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