Proposal: Deprecate decodeUtf8

[Edward Kmett]

Changing the combinator's semantics seems likely to be worse to me. I have
actual code using that function that would become much more dangerous if it
started accepting data through it that it can't round trip. Right now that
partiality acts as a dumb but effective safety net.

I'm neutral on the basic proposal, however.

-Edward

On Thu, Aug 18, 2016 at 6:11 AM, Oleg Grenrus <oleg.grenrus at iki.fi> wrote:

> Or should it be changed
>
> - decodeUtf8 = decodeUtf8With strictDecode
> + decodeUtf8 = decodeUtf8With lenientDecode
>
> > On 18 Aug 2016, at 12:08, Niklas Hambüchen <mail at nh2.me> wrote:
> >
> > I propose to add a deprecation pragma to the partial function
> > Data.Text.decodeUtf8.
> >
> > I see checks or decoding failure accidentally omitted from production
> > code every week. I claim decodeUtf8 to be *the* most abused partial
> > function in the current Haskell ecosystem (with `head` and `tail` at
> > least everybody knows they should feel bad when typing them down).
> >
> > decodeUtf8' with custom error message is a better solution in all cases
> > I have seen and can come up with.
> >
> > I therefore propose:
> >
> >  * Add deprecation pragma to decodeUtf8
> >  * Do it with Text.Lazy and *16/*32 functions too
> >  * But keep them indefinitely (we don't want to break compiles)
> >
> > I believe that deprecating decodeUtf8 will result in lots of useful
> > warnings across the world every day and less software crashing at
> runtime.
> >
> > Discussion period 2 months.
> >
> > Thanks!
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>
>
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