I (finally) managed to build the development build of dmd, with libraries. When testing if it compiles a Hello World program (it does, no problem) I got these messages:

C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.
C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.
C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2727,40): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.

If I output a dstring instead, those messages vanish. Does that mean we're getting rid of autodecoding?

If that's the case, have nothing against that. In fact it is nice to have that deprecation to catch bugs. I just thought, due to an earlier forum discussion, that it's not going to happen because it could break too much code. That's why I'm asking...

On Tuesday, 21 February 2017 at 14:46:10 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> I (finally) managed to build the development build of dmd, with libraries. When testing if it compiles a Hello World program (it does, no problem) I got these messages:
>
> C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.
> C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.
> C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2727,40): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.
>
> If I output a dstring instead, those messages vanish. Does that mean we're getting rid of autodecoding?

Sadly no. Just of old pre auto-decoding code.

> If that's the case, have nothing against that. In fact it is nice to have that deprecation to catch bugs. I just thought, due to an earlier forum discussion, that it's not going to happen because it could break too much code. That's why I'm asking...

No - this is just a deprecation of a specific overload of toUTF8.
See this PR for details:

https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/5083

However, this deprecation warning was fixed subsequently in:

https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/5143

So are you on LATEST? ;-)

On Tuesday, February 21, 2017 14:46:10 Dukc via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> I (finally) managed to build the development build of dmd, with
> libraries. When testing if it compiles a Hello World program (it
> does, no problem) I got these messages:
>
> C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead. C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead. C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2727,40): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.
>
> If I output a dstring instead, those messages vanish. Does that mean we're getting rid of autodecoding?
>
> If that's the case, have nothing against that. In fact it is nice to have that deprecation to catch bugs. I just thought, due to an earlier forum discussion, that it's not going to happen because it could break too much code. That's why I'm asking...

Well, hello world shouldn't be printing deprecation messages, so something needs to be fixed. But the only version of std.utf.toUTF8 that's being deprecated is the version that takes a static array, because it does the same thing as std.utf.encode. So, aside from the fact that something in Phobos apparently needs to be updated to not use that overload of toUTF8, it probably doesn't affect you.

Certainly, as it stands, auto-decoding is not going to be phased out - if nothing else because we don't have a clean way to do it. The code is slowly being improved so that it works with general character ranges, and stuff like byCodeUnit has been added, so less in Phobos relies on autodecoding, and we have better ways to avoid it, but to actually remove it such that str.front and str.popFront don't auto-decode would break code, and no one has come up with a way to make the necessary changes without breaking code.

Andrei wants to add RCString (or whatever it's going to be called) which would then be a reference counted string with small string optimizations and push for that to be used as the typical string type for code to use, and it wouldn't do autodecoding. So, maybe at some point, a lot of strings being used in D code won't autodecode, but as it stands, it's looking like we're permanently screwed with regards to arrays of char and wchar.

Maybe once enough of Phobos has been fixed to work with arbitrary ranges of characters, we can find a way to force the transition, but I doubt it.

- Jonathan M Davis

On Tuesday, 21 February 2017 at 15:24:18 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> [snip]
> - Jonathan M Davis

Thanks for the in-depth answer. Well, auto-decoding is an annoyance but not that bad, I can live with it.

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 02:46:10PM +0000, Dukc via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> I (finally) managed to build the development build of dmd, with
> libraries.  When testing if it compiles a Hello World program (it
> does, no problem) I got these messages:
> 
> C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead. C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2716,24): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead. C:\D\dmd2\windows\bin\..\..\src\phobos\std\stdio.d(2727,40): Deprecation: function std.utf.toUTF8 is deprecated - To be removed November 2017. Please use std.utf.encode instead.
> 
> If I output a dstring instead, those messages vanish. Does that mean we're getting rid of autodecoding?
> 
> If that's the case, have nothing against that. In fact it is nice to have that deprecation to catch bugs. I just thought, due to an earlier forum discussion, that it's not going to happen because it could break too much code. That's why I'm asking...

Do another git update.  This is a transitory issue where std.stdio got a bit out-of-sync with std.utf, but this deprecation message should no longer appear in the latest git HEAD.  (I also saw the same messages and was about to submit a PR, but after updating my git repos they went away.)


T

-- 
Unix was not designed to stop people from doing stupid things, because that would also stop them from doing clever things. -- Doug Gwyn