[Python-Dev] PEP 393 Summer of Code Project

[fwierzbicki at gmail.com]

On Thu, Sep 8, 2011 at 10:39 PM, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:
> On 9/8/2011 6:15 PM, fwierzbicki at gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> Oops, forgot to add the link for the gory details for Java and>  2 byte
>> unicode:
>>
>> http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Intl/Supplementary/
>
> This is dated 2004. Basically, they considered several options, tried out 4,
> and ended up sticking with char[] (sequences) as UTF-16 with char = 16 bit
> code unit and added 32-bit Character(int) class for low-level manipulation
> of code points.
>
> I did not see the indexing problem mentioned. I get the impression that they
> encourage sequence forward-backward iteration (cursor-based access) rather
> than random-access indexing.
Hmmm, sorry for the irrelevant link - my lack of expertise here is
showing. What I do know is that we (meaning Jim Baker) are taking
great pains to always use codepoints even for random access in our
unicode code. I can't speak to the performance implications without
some deeper study into what Jim has done.

-Frank