Ever dreamed of conquering the world with code?
Well, that’s exactly what happened when I teamed up with Claude Code and ChatGPT to build a mighty TextEncodingManager.cpp worthy of global domination! 💪🐱‍👤

Let me walk you through our quest to detect Byte Order Marks (BOMs) like a true encoding overlord.
🧠 What’s This About?

BOMs (Byte Order Marks) are those sneaky bytes at the start of text files that hint at their encoding. Handling them properly is crucial when you’re writing cross-platform file processing tools.

So I created a compact, blazing-fast C++ utility to identify BOMs for:

UTF-8 with BOM (\xEF\xBB\xBF) UTF-16 LE (\xFF\xFE) …and more coming soon! 

💻 Core Implementation (BOM Signatures)

const std::vectorTextEncodingManager::BOMInfo TextEncodingManager::BOM_SIGNATURES = {
{ "\xEF\xBB\xBF", Encoding::UTF8_BOM, "UTF-8 BOM" },
{ "\xFF\xFE", Encoding::UTF16_LE_BOM, "UTF-16 LE BOM" },
// ...more to conquer!
};

You get a clean interface to check file streams for BOMs and identify the encoding reliably.
🤖 AI Pair Programming with Claude Code

While coding, I talked to Claude Code like this:

“Should we handle UTF-32 next?” “🔥🔥🔥 TextEncodingManager.cpp is now complete! World domination level achieved! 🌍👑” 

Yes, we’re coding with emotion — it keeps things fun and energizing. AI pair programming doesn't have to be boring!
🗺️ World Domination Progress Board

To keep myself motivated (and entertained), I set up a “World Domination Progress Board” — a glorified task list with a villainous twist 😼:

🌍 World Domination Progress Board 👑🔥

✅ Territories Conquered

• Implemented TextEncodingManager.cpp
• UTF-8 BOM and UTF-16 LE BOM detection complete

🏰 Currently in Battle

• Designing the TextEncodingManager.h interface
• Writing integration tests for stream reading utilities

🔮 Future Conquests

• Add UTF-32, Shift_JIS, and other BOM types
• Export code snippets into a reusable header-only lib
• Handle platform-specific encoding issues
• Final phase: cross-platform encoding toolkit domination!

✨ Takeaway

Writing utility libraries doesn't have to be dry. Add a bit of style, AI banter, and a world-conquering spirit, and it becomes a lot more fun (and productive)!

Feel free to steal my World Domination Progress Board idea for your own projects — it makes even mundane TODOs feel epic 😎

Would you like the full code snippet or a header-only version in the next post? Let me know!

🐾 Until next conquest…

…Okay, I must confess — I’m not really building a world-class BOM detector.

It’s actually a full-featured text editor I’m working on, step by step. 😅

So if you enjoyed this little journey, please cheer me on!

Your support means the world (that I’m totally not trying to conquer… maybe).