On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Chris Angelico <[email protected]> wrote:
> There is an alternative. Python (as of version 3.3) has implemented a > new Flexible String Representation, aka PEP-393; the same has existed > in Pike for some time. A string is stored in memory with a fixed > number of bytes per character, based on the highest codepoint in that > string - if there are any non-BMP characters, 4 bytes; if any > U+0100-U+FFFF, 2 bytes; otherwise 1 byte. This depends on strings > being immutable (otherwise there'd be an annoying string-copy > operation when a too-large character gets put in), which is true of > ECMAScript. Effectively, all strings are stored in UCS-4/UTF-32, but > with the leading 0 bytes elided when they're not needed. This is how most VMs already work. I agree with you that it would be a better world if this was the case but I don't hear you suggesting how we might be able to change this without breaking the web? -- erik _______________________________________________ es-discuss mailing list [email protected] https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
