Re: [9fans] wchar_t in ANSI C (was "Announce: port")

["rob pike, esq." <rob@plan9.bell-labs.com>]

Here's a simple version of the problem.  Imagine you have a (bio) loop
along the lines of

	int c;

	while((c = Bgetc(&bWin)) != Beof){
		c = process(c);
		Bputc(&out, c);
	}

To make this work with UTF-8, all you do is change 'c' to 'rune'
in the calls:

	int c;

	while((c = Bgetrune(&bWin)) != Beof){
		c = process(c);
		Bputrune(&out, c);
	}

Loops like this are everywhere in the Plan 9 tools.  Bgetrune gets
called much more than Bgetc, I bet, at least for programs operating
on text.

No such charm works in ANSI C.

-rob