What is the point of bytevectors?

[divoplade <d@divoplade.fr>]

Hello guile users,

I am writing a library mixing some scheme code and C code, and I have
two options for interfacing C strings:
1. Use bytevectors;
2. Use strings with byte access semantics (so-called latin-1, which is
really a misleading name since it will most certainly contain utf-8-
encoded unicode text).

From the C side, they have nearly identical APIs, and the conversion
functions do not transcode anything.

From the scheme side, however:
1. The bytevector library needs to be imported;
2. The function names have way more characters to type;
3. The bytevector library is missing a lot of text functions (like
join, split, trim, pad, searching...).

If the user wants to always manipulate unicode (decoded) strings, using
either bytevectors or latin-1 strings require transcoding to enter the
library and to exit the library, so either option is valid.

But if the user wants to always manipulate utf-8-encoded strings [1],
using bytevectors is impossible or much more difficult (see points
above).

So, why should I ever use bytevectors?

divoplade

[1] https://utf8everywhere.org/