[fpc-devel] Unicode support (again)

[Jonas Maebe]

On 10 Nov 2008, at 17:00, Vincent Snijders wrote:

> procedure TForm1.Button1Click(Sender: TObject);
> var
>  w: widestring;
>  i: integer;
> begin
>  w := UTF8Decode('hallo äöü');
>  Edit1.Caption := UTF8Encode(w);

Note that if the file has been saved using an UTF-8 BOM, then the  
compiler will at compile time create a widestring containing the  
UTF-16 version of 'hallo äöü'. If you then pass this to a function  
expecting an ansistring (such as UTF8Decode), then the widestring  
manager will be used to decode that string and this decoded string  
will be passed to UTF8Decode. So then you'll pass an ansi-encoded  
string to UTF8Decode rather than an UTF-8-encoded string (unless ansi  
= utf-8 for the current execution).

It seems much more advisable to me to save the file with an UTF-8 BOM,  
or even better to add {$encoding utf-8} (and/or to pass -Fcutf-8 to  
the compiler) and then just use

Edit1.Caption := UTF8Encode('hallo äöü');


Jonas