GNU bug report logs - #7948
multibyte: 16-bit wchar_t on Windows and Cygwin

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From: Bruno Haible <bruno <at> clisp.org>
To: Paul Eggert <eggert <at> cs.ucla.edu>
Cc: bug-gnulib <at> gnu.org, cygwin <cygwin <at> cygwin.com>, bug-coreutils <bug-coreutils <at> gnu.org>, Eric Blake <eblake <at> redhat.com>
Subject: bug#7948: 16-bit wchar_t on Windows and Cygwin
Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2011 19:57:06 +0100

Hi Paul,

> >   - Define a type 'wwchar_t' on all platforms, equivalent to uint32_t
> >     on Windows platforms and to 'wchar_t' otherwise.
> 
> As a minor point, would it be OK to call this type
> 'xchar_t' instead?  'x' is the successor to 'w', after all,
> and it can be thought of as an abbreviation for 'eXtended'.

'wwchar_t' means "wide wide character".

In fact it's not really an "extended" character or "complex character".
It's just what POSIX calls a 'wchar_t'.

I like the analogy between strtol and strtoll. In the beginning, people
thought a 'long int' would be enough for everything. Then they discovered
a 'long long int' is needed. The same story repeats itself here with
the "wide characters" which turn out to be not wide enough, and
"wide wide characters" are needed.

> A problem with the 'ww' prefix is that mentally I start thinking
> "World Wide ..."

Indeed this meaning can come to mind, but I think it's not dangerous
since the term "world wide" has no meaning in a programming language.

Bruno
-- 
In memoriam Carl Friedrich Goerdeler <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Goerdeler>

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