[PATCH 0/4] binutils: UTF-8 improvements

[Andrew C Aitchison]

On Thu, 25 Sep 2025, Alice Carlotti wrote:

> The first three patches in this series form a substantial refactor of the UTF-8
> handling code in strings.c, with some fixes included in patch 2/4.
>
> Following discussion between us, Andrew Aitchison indpendently posted another
> patch series [1] that affects strings.c; my patch 2/4 includes equivalent
> changes as part of a more extensive patch.  Unlike this patch series, Andrew's
> patches also make improvements to nm, objdump and readelf, and updates the
> documentation for all four utilities accordingly.
>
> Patch 4/4 addresses the complete lack of test coverage, based upon an earlier
> incomplete patch from Nick Clifton.  I am satisfied that the new tests provide
> good coverage of the UTF-8 handling code in strings.c, but I am unsure what
> would be the desired output in some cases for the other utilities.  To
> facilitate future test improvements for nm, objdump and readelf, I have
> provided a test input file for these utilities with placeholder checks;
> hopefully someone else can build upon this to provide proper test coverage.
>
> Note that the test file unicode-symbols.s patch 4/4 includes byte sequences
> that aren't valid UTF-8.  I'll include a plaintext representation of these in
> the email.
>
> Is this series OK for master?
>
> (Apologies to Andrew for the conflict/overlap with your changes.  I wrote most
> of this series before seeing your latest patches, but it should be simple
> enough to drop or replace the strings.c changes in your patch, depending on
> which series lands first.)
>
> [1] https://sourceware.org/pipermail/binutils/2025-September/144233.html

Please go ahead with Alice's changes first.

I am not in a mood to rush to make the (mostly) whitespace fixes
my patches apparently require.

-- 
Andrew C. Aitchison                      Kendal, UK
                    andrew@aitchison.me.uk