How long is a string? How do I tell if one string is equal to another?
I thought I knew the answers to these questions, but it turns out to be more complex than I thought.
But I should have known: I knew that a
char isn't big enough for a Unicode character, and I could even remember the lovely phrase "astral planes". So I knew there was a problem with strings in Java.
Anyway, read the various answers to the two string questions at
http://java.sun.com/mailers/techtips/corejava/2006/tt0822.html (and Tim Bray's explanation of why a
char isn't big enough for a Unicode character at
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/04/26/UTF ) and then go and re-write lots of code.
