On Saturday, December 22, 2012 at 12:34 AM, Chris Angelico wrote: > On Sat, Dec 22, 2012 at 4:09 PM, Erik Arvidsson > <[email protected]> wrote: > > 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? > > > > > Why, if that's how it's already being done, can't there be an easy way > to expose it to the script that way? Just flip the Big Red Switch and > suddenly be fully Unicode-safe? Yes, it's backward-incompatible, but > if the script can have some kind of marker (like "use strict") to show > that it's compliant, > >
That would effectively be a second version of the language, which violates the 1JS promise (no opt-ins or unlockables) Rick > or if the engine can simply be told "be > compliant", we could begin to move forward. Otherwise, we're stuck > where we are. > > Chris Angelico > _______________________________________________ > es-discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss > >
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