Re: How to convert UInt8 array to NSString

FROM : Ricky Sharp
DATE : Wed May 07 00:37:51 2008

On May 6, 2008, at 10:56 AM, Jens Alfke wrote:

>
> On 6 May '08, at 7:03 AM, Thomas Engelmeier wrote:
>

>> As the OP wants to create NSStrings with data created by his 
>> application I'm pretty sure he will not want the the Windows 
>> encoding - unless he parses text documents originating from Windows.

>
> He didn't say where the data originates from, or what those APIs are 
> that return the strings. If they're networking APIs, the data could 
> very likely have originated on Windows.
>
> Also, you missed my point about using CP1252 (WinLatin1). It's 
> useful as a fallback for any unknown C strings because (a) it's a 
> superset of ISO-Latin-1, which (b) has no gaps in it (as ISO does, 
> from 0x80-0x9F), so decoding text into an NSString will never fail 
> and return nil. (I've debugged several crashes that stemmed from nil 
> NSStrings decoded from garbage strings.)



This is not entirely true.

windows1252 (CP1252) also has "holes" in it (undefined characters).

Definitely attempt to find out what platform or platforms data will 
come from.  It's often the case where your app needs "legacy" import 
features to work with the most common older Mac/Windows encodings.

Many apps offer "previews" of text that is to be imported.  Complex 
algorithms exist to determine an encoding from a block of text, but 
sometimes it's best to let users drive the show (i.e. let them pick an 
encoding and see if their preview looks valid).

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Ricky A. Sharp        mailto:<email_removed>
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