On 2024-08-20 12:36:43 +0000, chrisq said:

For work here, all functions that return data have a parameter that
limits the byte count. Usually pass a pointer to a buffer, with the
size parameter equal to or less than the buffer size. Some C library functions are just not safe to use in that respect.

Local spun string copy and other functions use the same sort of size limiting.

That, or preferably not transferring the data at all.

Whether that happens with page table modifications, or shared buffers.

Parts of OpenVMS are just chock full of buffer copies. (q.v. previous discussions of the buffer overhead incurred with faster network
connections. From discussions here most of a decade ago: https://lwn.net/Articles/629155/ )

And OpenVMS and apps have not-particularly-reentrant and not-particularly-performant code that calls some system service to
first size the data and then allocate the buffer and then calls again
to return the data. (Which is more glue code, as compared with
returning an object containing the data, too. OpenVMS itself doesn't particularly have that concept, however.)

OpenVMS has ~no concept of languages, either. Yeah, the C abd C++ I18N
giblets, Java and its own little world, maybe using the existing and
older ICU or maybe you ported a newer ICU, and the deprecated Terminal
Fallback Facility (TFF) and National (Replacement) Character Set (NCS) giblets, sure. All of which make things more interesting for apps that
want or need to deal with the UTF-8 and post-ASCII world.




--
Pure Personal Opinion | HoffmanLabs LLC

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On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 11:32:03 -0400, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

And OpenVMS and apps have not-particularly-reentrant and not-particularly-performant code that calls some system service to first
size the data and then allocate the buffer and then calls again to
return the data.

I can mention examples from the Linux world, too. How else would you do
it?

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On 8/23/2024 11:32 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

OpenVMS has ~no concept of languages, either. Yeah, the C abd C++ I18N giblets, Java and its own little world, maybe using the existing and
older ICU or maybe you ported a newer ICU, and the deprecated Terminal Fallback Facility (TFF) and National (Replacement)  Character Set (NCS) giblets, sure. All of which make things more interesting for apps that
want or need to deal with the UTF-8 and post-ASCII world.

Regarding UTF-8 support, then my take is that:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in programs/scripts: not really needed.

UTF-8 in file content and in databases: very much needed.

And support for the latter fall in 3 groups:
* JVM languages (Java, Groovy etc.) and I believe Python - does
support unicode and can read/write using any encoding including UTF-8
* C, C++, PHP - developer keeps track of what encoding a byte
sequence is in but possible to explicit convert encodings
(C/C++ has wchar_t but it is neither much used nor UTF-8 friendly
AFAIK)
* the traditional native languages - very little support except what
can be done by calling C functions

Arne

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On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:34:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in programs/scripts: not really needed.

I would say these are needed.

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On 8/23/2024 7:41 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:34:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in
programs/scripts: not really needed.

I would say these are needed.

I can live without the ability to create:

blåbærsyltetøj.txt

:-)

Arne

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On 8/23/24 6:34 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 8/23/2024 11:32 AM, Stephen Hoffman wrote:

OpenVMS has ~no concept of languages, either. Yeah, the C abd C++ I18N
giblets, Java and its own little world, maybe using the existing and
older ICU or maybe you ported a newer ICU, and the deprecated Terminal
Fallback Facility (TFF) and National (Replacement)  Character Set
(NCS) giblets, sure. All of which make things more interesting for
apps that want or need to deal with the UTF-8 and post-ASCII world.

Regarding UTF-8 support, then  my take is that:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in programs/scripts: not really needed.

UTF-8 in file content and in databases: very much needed.

And support for the latter fall in 3 groups:
* JVM languages (Java, Groovy etc.) and I believe Python - does
  support unicode and can read/write using any encoding including UTF-8

Perl has excellent Unicode support. It even comes with piconv, an iconv application implemented in Perl that can do conversions.

I'm told Unicode support in Python 2.x was pretty shaky but Python 3 is
a lot better.

* C, C++, PHP - developer keeps track of what encoding a byte
  sequence is in but possible to explicit convert encodings
  (C/C++ has wchar_t but it is neither much used nor UTF-8 friendly
  AFAIK)
* the traditional native languages - very little support except what
  can be done by calling C functions

and what can be done calling C functions is limited by the data in SYS$I18N_ICONV, which is about 20 years out of date. There have been a
dozen major releases of the Unicode standard in that time.

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On 24/08/2024 00:59, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 8/23/2024 7:41 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:34:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in
programs/scripts: not really needed.

I would say these are needed.

I can live without the ability to create:

blåbærsyltetøj.txt

:-)

Arne

Is that Norwegian, or Swedish?
:-)

--
Chris

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On 8/23/2024 8:52 PM, Chris Townley wrote:

On 24/08/2024 00:59, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 8/23/2024 7:41 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:34:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in
programs/scripts: not really needed.

I would say these are needed.

I can live without the ability to create:

blåbærsyltetøj.txt

:-)

Is that Norwegian, or Swedish?
:-)

Danish.

:-)

Arne

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On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:59:26 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

On 8/23/2024 7:41 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 19:34:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in
programs/scripts: not really needed.

I would say these are needed.

I can live without the ability to create:

blåbærsyltetøj.txt

Even restricting oneself to English, I would say this betrays a certain naïveté ...

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On 8/23/2024 10:20 PM, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 20:10:44 -0500, Craig A. Berry wrote:

I'm told Unicode support in Python 2.x was pretty shaky but Python 3 is
a lot better.

That was the primary motivation behind the Python 2→3 transition.

Unicode was also the primary motivation behind PHP 5->6. But it
got cancelled and PHP did 5->7 without going unicode.

Arne

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On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 22:23:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

Unicode was also the primary motivation behind PHP 5->6. But it got
cancelled and PHP did 5->7 without going unicode.

To be fair, that little peccadillo does get lost in the avalanche of other reasons why PHP is bloody awful ...

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On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 20:10:44 -0500, Craig A. Berry wrote:

I'm told Unicode support in Python 2.x was pretty shaky but Python 3 is
a lot better.

That was the primary motivation behind the Python 2→3 transition.

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On Fri, 2024-08-23 at 19:34 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

UTF-8 in file names, in usernames, in logicals, in identifiers and in programs/scripts: not really needed.

Everything needs to be utf8 aware. Not just text files. A good start
would be to add utf8 aware functionality to VMS.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

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On Sat, 2024-08-24 at 03:07 +0000, Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:

On Fri, 23 Aug 2024 22:23:18 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

Unicode was also the primary motivation behind PHP 5->6. But it got cancelled and PHP did 5->7 without going unicode.

To be fair, that little peccadillo does get lost in the avalanche of
other reasons why PHP is bloody awful ...

I'll drink to that.
--
Tactical Nuclear Kittens

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