Re: [RFC] Unicode Escape Syntax

On Tue, 25 Nov 2014, Dmitry Stogov wrote: > On Tue, Nov 25, 2014 at 1:00 PM, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote: > > > > > > On 25 Nov 2014, at 08:33, Dmitry Stogov <dmitry@zend.com> wrote: > > > > > > May be I misunderstood something, but why to introduce unicode escapes > > if PHP engine doesn't support Unicode. > > > > We don't have Unicode strings which are made of codepoints rather than > > bytes, sure. But we do usually treat these strings as UTF-8. The idea of > > doing this in a language without Unicode strings isn't new, C/C++ have the > > u8"" syntax for making UTF-8 strings. > > > > u8"string" tells that the whole string is UTF-8 encoded. > Your escape Unicode proposal assumes just UTF-8 codepoint, but the whole > string encoding is still undefined. > > > > > > > Always converting such escapes into UTF-8 encoding, doesn't make any > > sense for people who use other encodings for output, databases, etc. > > > > If you're using other encodings, why do you want to use a Unicode > > codepoints? Most Unicode codepoints will not supported by another character > > set. > > > > Agree, this Unicode escapes are not going to be used for anything > except UTF-8 encoded strings. I'm not completely against it. It's just > an incomplete solution. I think "incomplete" nails it on the head. Without "proper" Unicode support in the parser, compiler and string function semantics, having these escape codes doesn't really do a lot for us. I now think it would fit better just as part of the "UString" idea - although I still need to write my reservations and recommendations down about that too. cheers, Derick