--On Friday, March 17, 2000, 4:51 PM +1300 "Richard A. O'Keefe"
<ok at atlas.otago.ac.nz> wrote: 

[snip --- I loved the characterization, so to speak, of strings as thin,
fat, and really obese]
 
> The thing we _do_ need is to have '16-bit byte' arrays supported just like
> '8-bit byte arrays', to serve as substrate for the String implementation.

We do! ShortIntegerArrary and ShortRunArray, for 16 bit, and we have
WordArray for 32 bit! Bring 'em on! ;)
 
> You see, once you start including all sorts of encodings as different
> kinds of String, you have to start worrying about what it means for one
> String to equal another.  (Not that Unicode actually makes that easy
anyway;
> there are several congruence relations defined on Unicode strings and the
> really useful ones are not identical-as-code-sequence.)

Right. So we want encodings as part of the external representation of the
string, and the StringWHATEVER hierarchy for the internal representation,
and the *private* representation is something no sane person must thing
about (no more than we think about Small vs. LargeIntegers). Yes?

Stringingly,
Bijan Parsia.