How could any library function work with completely random bytes? Like, how would it iterate over code points? It may want to assume utf8's standard rules and e.g. know that after this byte prefix, the next byte is also part of the same code point (excuse me if I'm using wrong terminology), but now you need complex error handling at every single line, which would be unnecessary if you just made your type represent only valid instances.
Again, this is the same simplistic, vs just the right abstraction, this just smudges the complexity over a much larger surface area.
If you have a byte array that is not utf-8 encoded, then just... use a byte array.
Again, this is the same simplistic, vs just the right abstraction, this just smudges the complexity over a much larger surface area.
If you have a byte array that is not utf-8 encoded, then just... use a byte array.