Ideas for how to improve working with byte strings in UTF-8 builds of Jim Tcl about jimtcl

[msteveb]

I definitely don't like (1) and despite the fact that I wrote it in README.utf-8, I don't much like (2) either.
So that leaves (3) which I think is very reasonable.

We already have string bytelength and string byterange. Possibly the only thing missing is string byteindex (although it can be written in terms of string byterange).

The other thing that exists is pack and unpack. This is an efficient way to access binary data. Is it sufficient?

. set a ABC
ABC
. unpack $a -intbe 8 8
66
. unpack $a -str 8 8
B

[dbohdan]

I was aware of pack/unpack, but somehow missed that string byterange was already a thing. Since this means option (3) is implemented (nice! :-)), I can close the issue. My one suggestion is to update the "Working with Binary Data" section of README.utf-8 to point out the existence of the string byte* commands and recommend them instead of (2).

[msteveb]

I've updated README.utf-8

[dbohdan]

👍