UTF-8 library

[Patryk Zadarnowski]

On Thu, 8 Aug 2002, Ashley Yakeley wrote:

> At 2002-08-08 02:56, Patryk Zadarnowski wrote:
> 
> >1990 ANSI/ISO C requires chars to be at least 8 bits wide in section
> >5.2.4.2.1. This extends to ANSI/ISO C++, which cites ISO C for its
> >definition of <limits.h>. Haven't got C'99 handy, but it'll be a
> >similar story - char is *at least* 8 bits wide.
> >
> >Hope that satisfies the pedants.
> 
> But there's no guarantee that char is exactly 8 bits wide, is there? So 
> it's appropriate to have separate types, CChar/CSChar/CUChar and 
> Word8/Int8.

No, and neither are there any guarantees about there being *any*
specific-width integer types at all! If you're worried about char not
being 8 bit, it's likely that the C compiler won't provide an 8 bit
integer, either, so Word8/Int8 doesn't solve the problem.

Although, it's beyond me why the C standard should dictate anything
about Haskell, especially the arcane and obscure dark corners of it
such as the sizes of integer types. No Haskell compilers compile to
pure ISO C anyway.

	Pat.