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Diffstat (limited to 'INSTALL')
| -rw-r--r-- | INSTALL | 21 |
1 files changed, 21 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/INSTALL b/INSTALL index 08f3383e9..1d5c5b423 100644 --- a/INSTALL +++ b/INSTALL @@ -235,6 +235,27 @@ as make can become confused by build files created in the source directories. CONFIGURATION OPTIONS ===================== +Multibyte Character Support +--------------------------- + +Support for multibyte character sets that extend ASCII, such as UTF-8, is +under development but the code in the line editor is sufficiently stable to +be turned on by default in environments that provide full ISO 10646 support +including the preprocessor definition __STDC_ISO_10646__. + +The support can be explicitly enabled or disable with --enable-multibyte or +--disable-multibyte. Reports of systems where multibyte support was not +enabled by default but --enable-multibyte resulted in a usable shell would +be appreciated. The developers are not aware of any need to use +--disable-multibyte and this should be reported as a bug. + +The main shell is not yet aware of multibyte characters, so for example the +length of a scalar parameter will return the number of bytes, not +characters, and pattern tests likewise treat single bytes as if they were +characters. This means that pattern tests such as ? and [[:alpha:]] do not +work correctly with characters in multibyte character sets beyond the ASCII +subset. + Memory Routines --------------- |