[erlang-questions] String encoding and character set

[Robert Virding]

We do actually, in fact we have something much much better, a list. 
Using a list you don't have to worry about encodings but can use the 
unicode value directly in the string/list. This makes all processing 
much easier. Then when you are done you can convert it to what ever 
encoding you want.

I don't really understand why anyone would want to process data in an 
unnecessarily complex format instead of a simple one.

Robert

dda wrote:
> String types – at least well-implemented ones – don't just store a
> string, but also encoding information. They are/should be geared
> towards pain-free manipulation of text data, and by text I mean things
> outside ASCII-land. Encodings-aware string manipulation functions
> don't function on bytes, but on characters, a quite different notion.
> We don't have this in Erlang.
>