[fpc-devel] String and UnicodeString and UTF8String

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Hans-Peter Diettrich said:
> > memory management and the occasional code page conversion (and since 
> > this may reduce the number of code page conversions when working with 
> > "non-native" strings, it can also be a performance win).
> 
> IMO a single encoding, i.e. UTF-8, can cover all cases.

Well, for starters, it doesn't cover the existing Delphi/unicode codebase.

> While some hard core Ansi coders may whine about such a convention, the
> absence of implicit string conversions (except in external library calls)
> will make such applications more performant than mixed-encoding versions.

I don't see why this is the case. A current system encoding application does
not do any conversion. (except for GUI output, and that can be considered
negiable to the actual GUI overhead)
 
> Why spend time in the design of multiple RTL/LCL versions, when 
> a single version will be perfectly sufficient?

Why spent 13 years being compatible when you can throw it away in a second?