[fpc-pascal] FPC vs Delphi's unicode string support questions

[Sven Barth]

On 18.08.2012 21:20, Graeme Geldenhuys wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 18 August 2012 16:11, Jonas Maebe <jonas.maebe at elis.ugent.be> wrote:
>>
>>> 1) Is it correct that String <> AnsiString any more?
>>
>> Only in {$mode delphiunicode} (which is what you should use if you want to
>> compile code written for a Delphi version in which string=unicodestring).
>
> OK, that would help. I'll try that now in tiOPF v3.  When specifying
> that mode, do I still need to specify {$H+}?  What happens when I
> don't specify {$H+}?

In the Delphi modes (both $mode delphi and $mode delphiunicode) $H is 
set by default. You'd only need to define $H+ if you'd want to use the 
corresponding modeswitch "unicodestrings" in one of the other modes.

>>> 4) What Unicode encoding is used? UTF-8 or UTF-16?
>>
>> The same as in Delphi: utf-16
>
> Wasn't there lots of "votes" from many that string is UTF-8 encode
> under Linux, Unix, MacOSX, and UTF-16 under Windows? Thus avoiding any
> conversion speed penalties on all non-Windows platforms.  Or is
> defaulting to UTF-16 just the first step of implementing Unicode
> support, and UTF-8 will follow for all non-Windows platforms later?
>
>

As Delphi now supports Mac OS X and in the future Linux as well that 
gains some weight...

Regards,
Sven