The compiler makes a determination.
Maybe there is a command flag, maybe it reads the tea leaves, maybe
there is a configuration.
There is no mandate that it be a flag even if we hope it is.

Whatever the determination is, it does not involved reading the file ( or,
given multiple way to make a determination, at least one does not involve
reading the file)

Because an encoding has no content and a file is definitively never
independent of its content, I think it would take a herculean effort to
genuinely misconstrue
this sentence.

Now, do we believe this wording is good enough that this paper can progress
to evolution?


On Tue, Jun 22, 2021 at 11:58 PM Jens Maurer <Jens.Maurer_at_[hidden]> wrote:

> On 22/06/2021 23.54, Charlie Barto via SG16 wrote:
> >> The encoding scheme of a physical source file is determined in an
> implementation-
> >> defined manner. An implementation shall provide a mechanism to
> determine the
> >> encoding of a source file that is independent of its content.
> >
> > How does this work if the file is stored in an encoding where, for
> example, all the characters in the basic source character set had
> multi-byte representations, or were otherwise different from the "usual"
> values? Would this be in the form of a new preprocessor mechanism that
> asked the encoding of some other source file?
>
> "determine" wants to say "expressly specified by the user" (e.g. by
> command-line flag), but we don't have words to say that in the
> standard (because the standard has never heard about a command line).
>
> But I agree, we should find a better phrasing than "determine".
> Maybe "assert"?
>
> Oh, and the quoted text also needs to fix the ambiguous antecedent
> for "that is independent": As it stands, it refers to the source
> file or the encoding, but we want it to apply to "mechanism".
>
> Jens
>