[Quantlib-dev] Visual Studio warning C4819

[Eric E. <eri...@na...>]

Hi All,

Would anyone object to a policy of using only ASCII characters in source
code files?  At present, non-ASCII characters (>128, aka extended ASCII)
appear in various comments and literal strings in the source code, for
example line 54 of file ql/currency.hpp:

        //! fraction symbol, e.g, "¢"

If the machine on which you're reading this message uses the same mapping
as mine for non-ASCII characters, then that line ends with a cent symbol
in double quotes.

On other machines, that character (162) is interpreted as some other
symbol, or is not recognized at all and is rendered as a question mark. 
When the code is compiled on such a machine, Visual Studio emits the
following:

    warning C4819: The file contains a character that cannot be
    represented in the current code page. Save the file in Unicode
    format to prevent data loss.

Some possible courses of action:
1) Restrict ourselves to the ASCII character set
2) Convert all source code files to Unicode format
3) Disable C4819
4) Do nothing and as today leave affected parties to work around the
problem by implementing one of the above as a local hack

Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Eric