Re: guile can't find a chinese named file

[Linas Vepstas]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2017 at 11:58 AM, Marko Rauhamaa <address@hidden> wrote:
> David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
>
>> But at any rate, this cannot easily be fixed since Guile uses libraries
>> for encoding/decoding that cannot deal reproducibly with improper byte
>> patterns.
>
> Guile's mistake was to move to Unicode strings in the operating system
> interface.

Guile's mistake is that it does lots of pointless conversions from utf8 strings
to wide-char arrays, and back, which is a) a cpu suck, and b) a breeding
ground for bugs.   The current 2.1 guile, in git as of a few weeks ago, has
multiple utf8 handling bugs.

I believe most or all of these bugs are "internal", fixable without any
changes to the API or user code.   Its just that the utf8 unit tests for guile
are weak, and don't test some of the common usages, and thus allow bugs
to breed.

>> The problem here is that Guile cannot even deal with _properly_
>> encoded UTF-8 file names on the command line.
>
> Ok.

Well, yes, that too.

--linas