[erlang-questions] Erlang basic doubts about String, message passing and context switching overhead

[Benoit Chesneau]

On Sat, Jan 14, 2017 at 4:53 PM Oliver Korpilla <Oliver.Korpilla@REDACTED>
wrote:

> Could the Unicode support in elixir serve as a starting point?
>
> https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/1.3.3/String.html#content
>
> String.upcase/1 and String.downcase/1 seem to be Unicode-aware. And a lot
> of effort seems have gone in scenarios like this:
>
> "For example, the codepoint “é” is two bytes:
>
> iex> byte_size("é")
> 2"
>
> Given that both Erlang and elixir are implemented on top of BEAM, the
> wheel might not need reinventing? I know engineers and programmers love
> inventing stuff, and this discussion seems to point in that direction,
> but...
>
> Cheers,
> Oliver
>
>

If I remember correctly the unicode support of Elixir is written in elixir
and data come from the unicode/icu projects. data resources (codepoints and
so on ) are compiled as beam. (I do the dame in my idna lib).

The work may be simpler in using/wrting a nif over the well supported ICU
lib thoug. I'm curious about the reasonning that conducted to the current
implementation in elixir.

- benoit



>
>
> Gesendet: Freitag, 13. Januar 2017 um 23:34 Uhr
> Von: "Michał Muskała" <michal@REDACTED>
> An: "Richard A. O'Keefe" <ok@REDACTED>, "Steve Davis" <
> steven.charles.davis@REDACTED>, g@REDACTED, "Jesper Louis Andersen" <
> jesper.louis.andersen@REDACTED>
> Cc: "Erlang Questions" <erlang-questions@REDACTED>
> Betreff: Re: [erlang-questions] Erlang basic doubts about String, message
> passing and context switching overhead
>
> I fully agree there are no languages that deal with strings perfectly.
> That said there are those that are better at it and those that aren't so
> good. A language, where I need to look for a library to upcase or downcase
> my own name, fits into the second group in my book.
>
> Michał.
> On 13 Jan 2017, 13:20 +0100, Jesper Louis Andersen <
> jesper.louis.andersen@REDACTED>, wrote:
>
> Richard is indeed right, depending on what your definition of "String" is.
>  If a "String" is "An array of characters from some alphabet", then you
> need to take into account Strings are Unicode codepoints in practice. This
> is also the most precise definition from a technical point of view.
>  When I wrote my post, I was--probably incorrectly--assuming the older
> notion of a "String" where the representation is either ASCII or something
> like ISO-8859-15. In this case, a string coincides with a stream of bytes.
>  Data needs parsing. A lot of data comes in as some kind of stringy
> representation: UTF-8, byte array (binary), and so on.
>  And of course, that isn't the whole story, since there are examples of
> input which are not string-like in their forms.
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 13, 2017 at 2:34 AM Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@REDACTED
> [mailto:ok@REDACTED]> wrote:
>
> On 13/01/17 8:56 AM, Jesper Louis Andersen wrote:
> > Strings are really just streams of bytes.
>
> That was true a long time ago.  Maybe.
> But it isn't anywhere near accurate as a description
> of Unicode:
>   - Unicode is made of 21-bit code points, not bytes.
>   - Most possible code points are not defined.
>   - Some of those that are defined are defined as
>     "it is illegal to use this".
>   - Unicode sequences have *structure*; it is simply
>     not the case that every sequence of allowable
>     Unicode code points is a legal Unicode string.
>   - As a special case of that, if s is a non-empty
>     valid Unicode string, it is not true that every
>     substring of s is a valid Unicode string.
>
> In case you were thinking of UTF-8, not all byte
> sequences are valid UTF-8.
>
> Byte streams are as important as you say, but it's
> really hard to see the software for a radar or a
> radio telescope as processing strings...
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