Consider impl AsRef<OsStr> for BStr/BString about bstr HOT 3 CLOSED

Even if we were willing to mask issues (I'm not sure that I would be), I still don't quite see how this can be done. If the bstring contains invalid UTF-8, then what do you do? More generally how would this even be implemented correctly on Windows if it were valid UTF-8?

from bstr.

If the bstring contains invalid UTF-8, then what do you do?

More generally how would this even be implemented correctly on Windows if it were valid UTF-8?

Ah, I see what you're getting at.

On non-Windows, OsStr doesn't guarantee UTF-8 either, and specifically can contain arbitrary bytes, so I'd expect to end up with an OsStr containing exactly the bytes in the BString. And on Windows, valid UTF-8 shouldn't be an issue either (modulo the non-existence of a from_wtf8 method, but that should be fixable).

But the case that'd be a problem would be invalid UTF-8 on Windows. Digging into it further, I hadn't realized that on Windows, OsStr was required to be WTF-8, not just a bag of bytes. It'd be possible to convert in a reasonable, well-defined way, but not via an AsRef in-place reinterpretation.

from bstr.

Yes exactly. And the absence of a from_wtf8 is not necessarily fixable because as of now its absence is an explicit design decision (and similarly for the absence of an as_wtf8 method). Although I am a weak advocate in favor of adding them.

from bstr.