Re: Could Lua itself become UTF8-aware?

[Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo <lhf@...>]

> print("á")
> 
> When encoded as UTF-8.
> 
> Looking at the manual, I can't tell whether this is intentional or not.
> The program, when executed, does seem to function as expected. Can you
> clarify if this program is intended to be valid Lua?

Calling print with any string is valid Lua. What you see depends on what
the string contains and, more to the point, on how the terminal you use
interprets the contents of the string. Lua is actually completely agnostic
about the contents of a string: strings are just sequence of bytes.

So, yes, A Lua program that uses UTF-8 text in Lua strings will work just
fine, provided you only do I/O with them. The standard string library
does not work on UTF-8 text. The standard utf8 library helps but does not
replace the standard string library.