On Sat, 24 Jun 2017 19:08:36 +0100 Chris Vine <vine35792...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Jun 2017 15:51:49 +0100 > Daniel Boles <dboles....@gmail.com> wrote: > > Title says it all really. I had to use an std::string in one place > > because I needed to modify it quickly and with less hassle than > > using .replace() - and Glib::ustring won't let me get a reference to > > perform such modification. > > > > The documentation states > > "No reference return; use replace() > > <https://developer.gnome.org/glibmm/stable/classGlib_1_1ustring.html#a0f0c9b5aaad58279d3ac87a86a173f4a> > > to write characters." > > but does not explain why, nor does the commit log: these comments > > were added way back in the initial revision. > > > > So I'm wondering whether there's really a reason for this, or if it > > is just something that no one has wanted to change (until now!) > > It is because UTF-8 is a multibyte encoding, and any one character may > require between 1 and 5 bytes to represent it. If you were allowed to > change a byte at will you would be able to introduce invalid encoding > sequences. As to the absense of documentation, maybe it is because > this was thought to be self-evident, dunno. And I should perhaps also make the point that these operators return a 32-bit unicode character, not a byte, which is consequent on the same point. If you allowed mutation, the length of the string (in bytes) might change. _______________________________________________ gtkmm-list mailing list gtkmm-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtkmm-list
