How Comprehensive Is C 11's Unicode Support, and What Alternatives Exist?

Unicode Support in C 11

The C 11 standard library provides limited support for Unicode. The standard string library, std::string, does not provide any Unicode-specific functionality. It merely stores a sequence of char objects, regardless of whether they represent individual characters or multiple char units.

The localization library, , also has limitations. It assumes that a single "char-like object" equates to a single character, which is not always the case with Unicode. This makes it challenging to accurately categorize and manipulate characters in languages that use combining characters and other complex text features.

The provided functions for character classification and case conversion, such as isspace(), isprint(), and toupper(), take only a single code unit as input, limiting their ability to handle complex Unicode characters properly.

The standard code conversion facets, such as wstring_convert and wbuffer_convert, provide support for converting between different encodings, but they have limitations and complexities. The naming scheme is inconsistent, and the focus on UCS-2, an outdated encoding, seems unnecessary.

Additionally, there is a lack of support for other essential Unicode features, such as string normalization and text segmentation algorithms.

Potential Problems

The limited Unicode support in C 11 can lead to several problems:

• Improper character handling and manipulation, especially for languages that use combining characters or non-BMP characters.
• Inability to reliably read and write text in different Unicode encodings without additional libraries.
• Challenges with locale-aware operations on strings containing complex Unicode characters.
• Performance issues when working with Unicode strings, as the lack of built-in Unicode support may result in inefficient string handling.

Alternatives for Improved Unicode Support

For more comprehensive Unicode support, consider using external libraries such as ICU or Boost.Locale. These libraries provide a broader range of Unicode-specific functionality, including string normalization, text segmentation, regular expression support with level 1 Unicode compliance, and more advanced code conversion facilities.

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