Should I go to unicode?

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10-11-2003
nickname_changed

Should I go to unicode?

Howdy,

Reading an article at www.JoelOnSoftware.com about unicode, and the chapter in Petzolds "Programming Windows" book about unicode, I have come to realize how important unicode is.

Pretty simple question I want to ask, should I move my server program to unicode? Most of the stuff I use can be made into unicode pretty easily, just changing my 'string' to 'wstring' and so on. How important do you think it would be for the server to go to unicode? Will this help it be more multinational? Its NT based so really I should be using unicode by default anyway.

Also, I use a few things like FILE *'s, is it possible to make them Unicode? I know i can do it with iostreams and stringstreams and most other std stuff, but I'm not so sure about FILE*s. I look forward to hearing everyones thoughts on this :)
10-11-2003
nickname_changed

Also, how can I use winsock functions with unicode? send() and recv() both take char * arguments...
10-11-2003
Dante Shamest

send() and recv() are used to send bytes of data. So just do a cast to (char*) if you're using wchar_t.

Check out this old post. Ken Fitlike summarises how to use Unicode in the Windows API.

http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showt...define+UNICODE
10-12-2003
Cat

I always use unicode when I am dealing with strings that should go to or come from the user, including pathnames. I know how annoying it is to have unicode in a pathname and watch programs barf when they try to open a file. Unfortunately, this means I can't use the Standard Library (even wofstreams use char * pathnames, not wchar_t * pathnames) so I use the slightly more complicated WinAPI (doesn't have the nice stream operators).

I often use plain old char* strings for things like logging, etc.
10-12-2003
nickname_changed

If I get a request sent to the server, and I call the microsoft function IsTextUnicode or whatever its called on the string they give me, and if its in unicode I call send() and cast the information im sending as a char * (it will be in unicode), is that safe? If the request isn't in unicode I'll handle it as ASCII.
10-12-2003
Brian

Those crazy foreigners! ASCII for life!
10-12-2003
Cat

Quote:

Originally posted by stovellp
If I get a request sent to the server, and I call the microsoft function IsTextUnicode or whatever its called on the string they give me, and if its in unicode I call send() and cast the information im sending as a char * (it will be in unicode), is that safe? If the request isn't in unicode I'll handle it as ASCII.

Well, functions to determine if text is unicode don't always work. Why not start out by sending an ASCII header string, then use that string to tell the server what kind of data follows.
10-12-2003
XSquared

I believe it is a web server, so any type of client could connect.
10-12-2003
Dante Shamest

Many protocols like SMTP and HTTP only work with ASCII.
Also note that its not necessary to terminate any string you send with a NULL character, because you are communicating with other servers/clients that may be written in other programming languages.
10-13-2003
nickname_changed

Ahh ok, so if I send all the headers in ASCII, and send the files as either ASCII or Unicode (depending on what IsTextUnicode tells me), should that be ok?
10-13-2003
Dante Shamest

That should not be a problem.