How Does C 11 Handle Unicode, and What are its Limitations?

Unicode Support in C 11: An Overview

C 11 provides limited Unicode support, with significant shortcomings in several key areas.

Standard Library Support for Unicode

The C standard library has weak Unicode support:

• The strings library offers no direct Unicode functionality.
• The localization library assumes one character equals one code unit, oversimplifying Unicode handling.
• The input/output library relies on external frameworks to convert between Unicode and other encodings.
• The regular expressions library lacks adequate Unicode support for practical use.

Use of std::string for Unicode

While std::string accommodates a sequence of char objects, it's not intended for Unicode support. It provides a low-level view of text, not a high-level abstraction for text manipulation.

Potential Problems with Unicode in C 11

C 11's Unicode handling faces several challenges:

• Lack of UTF-8 deserialization: The standard lacks a way to deserialize from an UTF-16 stream into an UTF-8 string.
• UCS-2 Focus: The standard's focus on UCS-2, an outdated Unicode encoding, limits its usefulness.
• Inadequate Conversion Support: Some essential conversions, such as UTF-16 to UTF-8, are not supported.
• Regular Expression Shortcomings: C regexes do not meet the minimum level of Unicode support for practical use.

Alternative Unicode Libraries

For robust Unicode handling, consider using external libraries like ICU and Boost.Locale which provide comprehensive Unicode functionality, including:

• Unicode normalization,
• Text segmentation,
• Character classification,
• Unicode translation.

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