On 10/08/2018 10:05 PM, Markus Scherer wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 8, 2018 at 6:14 PM Lyberta <lyberta_at_[hidden]
> <mailto:lyberta_at_[hidden]>> wrote:
>
> > If you do want a distinct type, why not just standardize on
> uint8_t? Why
> > does it need to be a new type that is distinct from that, too?
>
> Here's a small example why both "char" and "uint8_t" are horrible
> types
> as implemented now on all major implementations:
>
>
> std::uint8_t small_number = 65;
> std::cout << small_number << '\n';
>
> This will print "A" instead of 65 on all implementations I've
> tested it
> on. This breaks templates that do text processing.
>
>
> Hm? This has very little to do with text processing. Someone made a
> choice that ostream << small number yields a character.

I think it is a relevant example. The concern is the inability to
differentiate character data vs numeric data due to uint8_t being a
typedef of another type that might be a character type (unsigned char)
or numeric type (unsigned short) depending on the implementation.

>
> If you want specific formatting of a value, you implement and call a
> value formatter function that returns a string.
> Or you define a value class and define << for it.

I agree this is a better practice.

>
> Personally, I think
> we need to add "char8_t" and also a "shortest" type so implementations
> can use "unsigned shortest" to implement std::uint8_t.
>
>
> That's called uint_least8_t, right? If it was smaller than 8 bits, it
> would be useless for UTF-8.

I believe Lyberta is arguing for a small builtin integer type that is
not defined in terms of a type that may be confused as being a character
type.

>
> And I doubt that there is any platform that supports C++11 or higher
> and where uint8_t != uint_least8_t.

I hope that is true. But there are platforms where uint8_t is not
available because uint_least8_t is larger than 8 bits.

Tom.

>
> markus
>
>
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