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Re: what shall we do about iconv?



About a month ago I wrote here that "there seems to be no sensible way
of implementing a function that converts data while reading it from a
stream and knows at the end how may non-reversible conversions
occurred". I tried contacting the Open Group about this, and I
received some replies from Andrew Josey.

The Group thinks that the specification is clear enough: iconv()
should return -1 whenever one of the conditions EILSEQ, E2BIG, EINVAL
or EBADF occurs. Application code is already reliant on this
behaviour, so it cannot be changed. Apparently the problem I pointed
out is real, but it would have to be solved using an alternate API
instead of iconv. I don't know whether anyone is likely to take any
concrete steps towards defining such an API, but I feel happier now
that I know what the situation is.

Just thought I'd register this for the archives ...

Edmund
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