Infiniteness (was: RE: Text Editors...; and getting OFF TOPIC)

From: Kent Karlsson (kentk@cs.chalmers.se)
Date: Fri Dec 12 2003 - 14:01:47 EST

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    > > Except in the original context it should have meant "infinite", as
    > > there is actually an infinite number of potential default grapheme
    > > clusters.
    >
    > How can that be, if there is a finite number of characters that can be
    > part of a cluster, and a (presumably) finite upper bound on the number
    > of characters in a cluster?

    There is no such finite upper bound. Theoretically, that is. In practice
    the size of grapheme clusters will be fairly small. A grapheme cluster
    with 9 characters in it, say made of 3 lead Hangul jamos, 3 vowel jamos,
    and 3 trail jamos will be among the larger ones you will encounter.
    But there is no theoretical bound.

    B.t.w. that all strings are finite does NOT imply that the number of
    strings is finite (as long as there is no bound on the length).

                    /kent k

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