From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <6854804de7b1ceca96d3e2925d0f90ae@plan9.bell-labs.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] wchar_t in ANSI C (was "Announce: port")
From: "rob pike, esq." <rob@plan9.bell-labs.com>
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Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2002 08:53:45 -0400
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 803d39d6-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

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