[Lazarus] Replacing Delphi function calls with FCL/LCL functions by converter

[Hans-Peter Diettrich]

Juha Manninen schrieb:

> Then there is 
>   FileExists --> FileExistsUTF8($1)
> 
> The idea is to add all file name related functions that have a ...UTF8 
> counterpart, and make their replacement optional somehow.
> 
> Now I would need more function names and parameters to replace. Other comments 
> are welcome, too.

I just wonder why special UTF8 functions are required at all. From the 
user VP the use of UTF-8 arguments should not deserve different 
procedures, overloaded procedures should be sufficient if ever required. 
But this most probably is an FPC topic, about the distinction and 
possibly automatic conversion between Ansi/MBCS, UTF-8 and UTF-16/Wide 
strings.

If the type AnsiString had not been defined and used improperly in 
Delphi, we could default String to ASCII or UTF-8 encoding, and have 
more AnsiString or SBCS/MBCS string types with an explicit Encoding tag 
included. AFAIK in Delphi it just turned out that the new AnsiString is 
incompatible with older DLLs, due to the added Encoding tag. While such 
a tag should be restricted to the Delphi RawByteString, the name is an 
horrible misnomer - a RAW BYTE string IMO should have no encoding at 
all, with no automatic conversion, also usable for e.g. binary data or 
other locale-invariant content (lookup of nationalized text...). Instead 
an EncodedString type could have an Encoding tag, so that eventually 
required conversions etc. can be determined by the RTS.

DoDi