Julia uses the same strategy, but indexing an utf8 string returns the rune rather than the byte. If you try to get a byte in the middle of a rune representation, it raises an error.
The `next(string, index)` function used for the iteration protocol works like the `utf8.DecodeRuneInString()` shown in the example, but it returns the next valid index rather than the character width.
Rust has a similar approach (in that it raises an error when you attempt to do something not on a rune boundary), although `string[index]` still returns a byte rather than a character but strong static typing means that it isn't a huge problem.
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Julia uses the same strategy, but indexing an utf8 string returns the rune rather than the byte. If you try to get a byte in the middle of a rune representation, it raises an error.
The `next(string, index)` function used for the iteration protocol works like the `utf8.DecodeRuneInString()` shown in the example, but it returns the next valid index rather than the character width.
Rust has a similar approach (in that it raises an error when you attempt to do something not on a rune boundary), although `string[index]` still returns a byte rather than a character but strong static typing means that it isn't a huge problem.
Go also has utf8.RuneCount([]byte) and utf8.RuneCountInString(string), which return the number of runes: http://golang.org/pkg/unicode/utf8/#RuneCount
(check the docs, there's also RuneStart, which returns true/false if you index mid-rune)