Re: [Caml-list] Looking for a windows ocaml UTF-16 encoded filename aware library

[Alain Frisch <alain.frisch@lexifi.com>]

Hello,

The real solution is to fix OCaml so that it can interact properly with 
arbitrary filenames under Windows. See:

https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/153
http://caml.inria.fr/mantis/view.php?id=3771

The basic idea is that filenames are represented by OCaml strings 
representing an utf-8 encoding of the actual filename.  To reduce code 
breakage, a fallback interprets strings that are invalid utf-8 sequences 
using the current code page.  But this is still a rather intrusive 
change, since filenames received from readdir are always utf-8 encoded, 
which can break existing code.  (One could imagine providing two 
variants of readdir to smooth the migration path.)

Any help reviewing and testing the PR above would be very much appreciated!

Alain


On 05/02/2016 11:54, Matthieu Dubuget wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I'm currently analysing a NTFS file-tree with a windows OCaml native application.
>
> This application is using:
> - Unix.{opendir,readdir,closedir}
> - and Unix.LargeFile.lstat
>
> The unix library of OCaml distribution is using ANSI variants of system functions. This is working fine until files or directories whose UTF-16 encoded name cannot be converted into the code page in use are reached.
>
> I'm about to write a small library to solve this problem: it would mimic the corresponding code from OCaml unix library, but using WIDE variants of microsoft system functions in the C stub instead of ANSI variants.
>
> Before going on: do you know of any library that already do this I could use?
>
> Thanks for any link.
>
> Salutations
>