Python usage numbers

[Roy Smith]

In article <4f384b6e$0$29986$c3e8da3$5496439d at news.astraweb.com>,
 Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:

> > I could hope for one and only one, but I know I'm just going to be
> > disapointed.  The last project I worked on used UTF-8 in most places,
> > but also used some C and Java libraries which were only available for
> > UTF-16.  So it was transcoding hell all over the place.
> 
> Um, surely the solution to that is to always call a simple wrapper 
> function to the UTF-16 code to handle the transcoding? What do the Design 
> Patterns people call it, a facade? No, an adapter. (I never remember the 
> names...)

I am familiar with the concept.  It was ICU.  A very big library.  Lots 
of calls.  I don't remember the details, I'm sure we wrote wrappers.  It 
was still a mess.

> > Hopefully, we will eventually reach the point where storage is so cheap
> > that nobody minds how inefficient UTF-32 is and we all just start using
> > that.  Life will be a lot simpler then.  No more transcoding, a string
> > will just as many bytes as it is characters, and everybody will be happy
> > again.
> 
> I think you mean 4 times as many bytes as characters. Unless you have 32 
> bit bytes :)

Yes, exactly.