Re: Win32 *W functions and old -C behavior

Quoth [email protected] ("Oleg V. Volkov"):
> Greetings.
> 
> Once upon a time using -C on Win32 made Perl use *W functions, but
> after several versions it was removed, causing all kind of headache
> to people who used it in their programs and hoped that they won't
> have problems any longer with accessing filenames written in different
> scripts. Right now I'm writing a module that have to do all kind
> of unperlish stuff like direct access to memory, pointer arithmetics
> and API calls to have such functionality back and I often wonder
> just why it was removed without any alternative way to ask Perl
> to use native calls (since all *A calls on any NT system is
> just wrappers around *W).
> 
> Recently I've also stumbled on interesting passage in perlrun:
> --->>>---
> In Perls earlier than 5.8.1 the -C switch was a Win32-only switch
> that enabled the use of Unicode-aware "wide system call" Win32
> APIs. This feature was practically unused, however, and the command
> line switch was therefore "recycled".)
> ---<<<---
> 
> Can somebody explain, where that strange assumption of
> "practically unused" comes from? From somebody, who never seen
> anything but ASCII on his FS? Not to mention that considering
> all Windows documentation that encourages to use only *W functions
> for a long time already, behavior once provided by -C switch should
> actually be default on Win32.

This question would be better directed at p5p ([email protected]),
as they are the people who maintain perl (and who made this decision).
AFAIK, they weren't aware that anyone used this switch.

Ben

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