String != [Char]

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 6:00 PM, Johan Tibell <johan.tibell at gmail.com> wrote:

> C++'s char* is morally equivalent of our ByteString, not Text. There's
> no standardized C++ Unicode string type, ICU's UnicodeString is
> perhaps the closest to one.

Hmm, std::u16string, std::u23string, and std::wstring are C++ standard
types to process Unicode texts.

Anyway, my inclination is that having a proper string in Haskell type would
be a Good Thing.  Sometimes it is worth breaking the textbook.

In our local Haskell system for AVR microcontrollers, we explicitly made
String distinct from [Char] -- we cannot afford the memory
inefficiency that [Char] entails, just to represent simple strings.

-- Gaby