[fpc-pascal] String literals and code page of .pas source file

[Tomas Hajny]

On 2020-09-14 14:51, Michael Van Canneyt wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Sep 2020, Tomas Hajny via fpc-pascal wrote:
> 
>>> opened:
>>> {$ifdef FPC_HAS_FEATURE_ANSISTRINGS}
>>>   { if no codepage is yet assigned then assign default ansi codepage 
>>> }
>>>   TextRec(t).CodePage:=TranslatePlaceholderCP(TextRec(t).CodePage);
>>> {$else FPC_HAS_FEATURE_ANSISTRINGS}
>>> 
>>> I see no need to change this ?
>> 
>> Please, have a look at OpenStdIO (implemented at the end of text.inc). 
>> That one changes the default codepage for Input, Output and StdErr, 
>> but it doesn't care about possible redirection and/or piping to some 
>> other application (not necessarily written in FPC). That approach has 
>> both advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that "type 
>> <redirected_file>" will give correct results on the console. The 
>> disadvantage is that opening the redirected file with any Win32 GUI 
>> application (let's say notepad.exe) will result in garbage.  I don't 
>> say that it is necessarily bad, but it should be documented at least 
>> if we want to keep it that way.
> 
> I would definitely keep it that way.
> 
> As I see it: Redirection or not should not matter, the system should
> assume console output.
> Things like 'tee' make this concept dubious in any case:
> 
> If you pipe output to a program, you don't expect the codepage to 
> change
> because of the redirection.

No problem, but I'd suggest documenting it at least.


>>> I think it will differ since Crt is not codepage aware. If you want 
>>> it to
>>> work the same you'll have to make Crt codepage (and hence unicode) 
>>> aware.
>> 
>> As mentioned by me, Crt is currently more codepage aware than the 
>> System unit output as far as output to console is concerned, because 
>> Crt provides correct output even for shortstrings (unlike the System 
>> unit).
> 
> I would need to check the details, but that sounds more like
> accidental behaviour as opposed to intended behaviour to me :-)


Not really accidental:

r3606 | florian | 2006-05-20 23:42:58 +0200 (Sat, 20 May 2006) | 2 lines
* fix from Maxim Ganetsky to fix CRT output with non latin code pages, 
should fix #6785

(there were additional changes performed later, but the primary change 
was this one)

Tomas