[fpc-devel] Unicode support (yet again)

[Marco van de Voort]

In our previous episode, Fl?vio Etrusco said:
> 
> That's somewhat what I was thinking. Actually something like
> 
>   UnicodeString = object
>   strict private
>     FEncoding: Integer;
>     FBuffer: AnsiString;
>     function GetCodePointAt(AIndex: SizeInt): Integer;
>     procedure SetCodePoint(AIndex: SizeInt; p_Value: Integer);
>   public
>     property CodePoint[AIndex: SizeInt]: Integer read GetCodePointAt
> write SetCodePoint; default;
>   end;
> 
> I just don't whether something like this is already implemented in the
> test branches, at least for -err- testing...

Such ability is not unique for an object. One can also do something like
that with a native type. It was discussed and rejected.

 The trouble is that it is not that easy, consider the first thing a
long time pascal user will do is fix his existing code which has many
constructs that loop over a string:

setlength(s2,s1);
for i:=1 to length(s1) do
  s2[i]:=s1[i];

Now, to return codepoint[i], you need to parse all codepoints before [i].

So instead of O(n) this loop suddenly becomes O(n^2)....