Re: Unibyte characters, strings, and buffers

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Andreas Schwab <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden,  address@hidden,  address@hidden
> Date: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:30:51 +0100
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Next question: what happens to implementation of encoding?  It
> > currently produces raw bytes.  Should it produce eight-bit characters
> > instead?  If not, who or what will convert raw bytes into eight-bit
> > characters, when they are inserted into a buffer or string, and who or
> > what will convert them back when they are written to a file or sent to
> > a process?
> 
> Writing out a character in the eight-bit charset will produce an
> eight-bit character, and vice-versa.

So you are saying that encoding should produce eight-bit characters,
AFAIU.

> The process is the same, just put on a lower level.  The only visible
> difference will be the value of aref: it will produce values in the
> range of the eight-bit charset instead of 128-255.  The challenge will
> be to find and fix all such assumptions.

Not just aref, I think: we currently pass SSDATA(s) directly to libc
I/O functions in some places.