Best Type for UTF-8 data?
c++, unicode, utf-8
Solution
I'd just use std::string, as it is consistent with the UTF-8 ideal of treating data just as you would null-terminated ASCII strings unless you actually need their unicode-ness.
I also like GTKmm's Glib::ustring, but that only works if you're writing a GTKmm (or at least Glibmm) application.
Problem
What is the best type, in C++, for storing UTF-8 string? I'd like to avoid rolling my own class if possible. My original thought was `std::string` — however, this uses `char` as the underlying type. `char` may be unsigned or signed — it varies. On my system, it's signed. UTF-8 code units, however, are unsigned octets. This seems to indicate that it's the wrong type. This leads us to `std::basic_string<unsigned char>` - which seems to fit the bill: unsigned, 8-bit (or larger) chars. However, most things seem to use `char`. glib, for example, uses `char`. C++'s `ostream`'s use `char`. Thoughts?