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### 2959. `char_traits<char16_t>::eof` is a valid UTF-16 code unit

Section: 23.2.4.4 [char.traits.specializations.char16.t] Status: New Submitter: Jonathan Wakely Opened: 2017-05-05 Last modified: 2019-04-02

Priority: 3

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Discussion:

The standard requires that `char_traits<char16_t>::int_type` is `uint_least16_t`, so when that has the same representation as `char16_t` there are no bits left to represent the `eof` value.

23.2.4.4 [char.traits.specializations.char16.t] says:

> — The member `eof()` shall return an implementation-defined constant that cannot appear as a valid UTF-16 code unit.

Existing practice is to use the "noncharacter" `u'\uffff'` for this value, but the Unicode spec is clear that `U+FFFF` and other noncharacters are valid, and their appearance in a UTF-16 string does not make it ill-formed. See here and here:

> The fact that they are called "noncharacters" and are not intended for open interchange does not mean that they are somehow illegal or invalid code points which make strings containing them invalid.

In practice this means there's no way to tell if `basic_streambuf<char16_t>::sputc(u'\uffff')` succeeded or not. If it can insert the character it returns `to_int_type(u'\uffff')` and otherwise it returns `eof()`, which is the same value.

I believe that `char_traits<char16_t>::to_int_type(char_type c)` can be defined to transform `U+FFFF` into `U+FFFD`, so that the invariant `eq_int_type(eof(), to_int_type(c)) == false` holds for any `c` (and the return value of `sputc` will be distinct from `eof`). I don't think any implementation currently meets that invariant.

I think at the very least we need to correct the statement "The member `eof()` shall return an implementation-defined constant that cannot appear as a valid UTF-16 code unit", because there are no such constants if `sizeof(uint_least16_t) == sizeof(char16_t)`.

This issue is closely related to LWG 1200, but there it's a slightly different statement of the problem, and neither the submitter's recommendation nor the proposed resolution solves this issue here. It seems that was closed as NAD before the Unicode corrigendum existed, so at the time our standard just gave "surprising results" but wasn't strictly wrong. Now it makes a normative statement that conflicts with Unicode.

[2017-07 Toronto Wed Issue Prioritization]

Priority 3

Proposed resolution: