• bauss (11/11) Jul 14 2017 I understand what it is and how it works, but I don't understand
• ag0aep6g (15/20) Jul 14 2017 1) Drop two elements from "Bär". With auto-decoding you get "r", which
• aberba (2/9) Jul 15 2017 So what is the current plan? :)
• ag0aep6g (3/4) Jul 15 2017 As far as I'm aware, there's no concrete plan to change anything. We
• Joakim (8/19) Jul 15 2017 Andrei has talked about having a non-auto-decoding path for those
• Seb (13/22) Jul 15 2017 The idea is that once DIP1000 has matured, more focus on compiler

bauss <jj_1337 live.dk> writes:

I understand what it is and how it works, but I don't understand 
anything of how it solves any problems?

Could someone give an example of when auto-decoding actually is 
useful in contrast to not using it?

Just trying to get an understanding of what exactly its purpose 
is.

I did read 
https://jackstouffer.com/blog/d_auto_decoding_and_you.html

But I still feel like there's not a clear explanation of what 
issues exist when you don't have it.

If I need to be more clear, just let me know.

ag0aep6g <anonymous example.com> writes:

On 07/15/2017 06:21 AM, bauss wrote:
 I understand what it is and how it works, but I don't understand 
 anything of how it solves any problems?
 
 Could someone give an example of when auto-decoding actually is useful 
 in contrast to not using it?

1) Drop two elements from "Bär". With auto-decoding you get "r", which 
is nice. Without auto-decoding you get [0xA4, 'r'] where 0xA4 is the 
second half of the encoding of 'ä'. You have to know your Unicode to 
understand what is going on there.

2) Search for 'ä' (one wchar/dchar) in the `string` "Bär". With 
auto-decoding, you pop the 'B' and then there's your 'ä'. Without 
auto-decoding, you can't find 'ä', because "Bär" doesn't have a single 
element that matches 'ä'. You have to search for "ä" (two `char`s) instead.

The goal of auto-decoding was to make it so that you don't have to think 
about Unicode all the time when processing strings. Instead you could 
think in terms of "characters". But auto-decoding falls flat on that 
goal, which is why it's disliked. You still have to think about Unicode 
stuff for correctness (combining characters, graphemes), and now you 
also have to worry about the performance of auto-decoding.

aberba <karabutaworld gmail.com> writes:

On Saturday, 15 July 2017 at 05:54:32 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
 On 07/15/2017 06:21 AM, bauss wrote:
 [...]

 1) Drop two elements from "Bär". With auto-decoding you get 
 "r", which is nice. Without auto-decoding you get [0xA4, 'r'] 
 where 0xA4 is the second half of the encoding of 'ä'. You have 
 to know your Unicode to understand what is going on there.

 [...]

So what is the current plan? :)

ag0aep6g <anonymous example.com> writes:

On 07/15/2017 08:14 PM, aberba wrote:
 So what is the current plan? :)

As far as I'm aware, there's no concrete plan to change anything. We 
just gotta deal with auto-decoding for the time being.

Joakim <dlang joakim.fea.st> writes:

On Saturday, 15 July 2017 at 18:14:48 UTC, aberba wrote:
 On Saturday, 15 July 2017 at 05:54:32 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
 On 07/15/2017 06:21 AM, bauss wrote:
 [...]

 1) Drop two elements from "Bär". With auto-decoding you get 
 "r", which is nice. Without auto-decoding you get [0xA4, 'r'] 
 where 0xA4 is the second half of the encoding of 'ä'. You have 
 to know your Unicode to understand what is going on there.

 [...]

 So what is the current plan? :)

Andrei has talked about having a non-auto-decoding path for those 
who know what they're doing and actively choose that path, while 
keeping auto-decoding the default, so as not to break existing 
code.  Jack has been submitting PRs for this, but it is probably 
tedious work, so progress is slow and I don't know how much more 
remains to be done:

https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pulls?q=is%3Apr+auto-decoding+is%3Aclosed

Seb <seb wilzba.ch> writes:

On Saturday, 15 July 2017 at 18:47:25 UTC, Joakim wrote:
 On Saturday, 15 July 2017 at 18:14:48 UTC, aberba wrote:
 So what is the current plan? :)

 Andrei has talked about having a non-auto-decoding path for 
 those who know what they're doing and actively choose that 
 path, while keeping auto-decoding the default, so as not to 
 break existing code.  Jack has been submitting PRs for this, 
 but it is probably tedious work, so progress is slow and I 
 don't know how much more remains to be done:

 https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pulls?q=is%3Apr+auto-decoding+is%3Aclosed

The idea is that once DIP1000 has matured, more focus on compiler 
support for reference-counting will be given with the aim of 
improving the  nogc experience. One example is DIP1008 for  nogc 
exceptions [1], but another one that is important in this context 
is RCString [2]. The idea is that RCString will be a new opt-in 
string type without auto-decoding and GC.

Another idea in the game is `version(NoAutoDecode)`:

https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/5513

However, here's unfortunately still unclear whether that could 
result in a working solution.

[1] https://github.com/dlang/DIPs/blob/master/DIPs/DIP1008.md
[2] https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/4878