Grapheme clusters, a.k.a.real characters

[Rhodri James]

On 14/07/17 15:32, Michael Torrie wrote:
> On 07/14/2017 08:05 AM, Rhodri James wrote:
>> On 14/07/17 14:31, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>>> Of course, UTF-8 in a bytes object doesn't make the situation any
>>> better, but does it make it any worse?
>>
>> Speaking as someone who has been up to his elbows in this recently, I
>> would say emphatically that it does make things worse.  It adds an extra
>> layer of complexity to all of the questions you were asking, and more.
>> A single codepoint is a meaningful thing, even if its meaning may be
>> modified by combining.  A single byte may or may not be meaningful.
> 
> Are you saying that dealing with Unicode in Google Go, which uses UTF-8
> in memory, is adding an extra layer of complexity and makes things worse
> than they might be in Python?

I'm not familiar with Go.  If the programmer has to be aware that the 
she is using UTF-8 under the hood, then yes, it does add an extra layer 
of complexity.  You have to remember the rules of UTF-8 as well as 
everything else.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Kynesim Ltd