How to represent char in TypeSpec

[live1206]

Clear and concise description of the problem

In swagger, we support char format here.

How are we going to represent char in TypeSpec

• first-class type char
• scalar
• string with maximum length

Checklist

• Follow our Code of Conduct
• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that request the same feature to avoid creating a duplicate.

[timotheeguerin]

We had this discussion last week,

Proposal was to have something like that

@minLength(1)
@maxLength(1)
scalar character extends string;

there was some concern about using char itself as the name as it can be a bit ambiguous in certain language

[bterlson]

In particular, there is a question of whether we need one or all of:

• char ala C/C++ where it's a byte, and can represent an ASCII character.
• char ala C#/Java where it's 2 bytes, and can represent a UTF-16 code unit
• char ala Rust/Go where it's 4 bytes, and can represent any Unicode scalar value

If you have any thoughts on this, please do share!