The LegacyStrings package provides compatibility string types from Julia 0.5 (and earlier), which were removed in subsequent versions, including:

• ASCIIString: a single-byte-per character string type that can only hold ASCII string data.
• UTF8String: a string type with single byte code units (UInt8), encoding strings as UTF-8.
• UTF16String: a string type with two-byte native-endian code units (UInt16), encoding strings as UTF-16.
• UTF32String: a string type with four-byte native-endian code units (UInt32), encoding strings as UTF-32.
• ByteString: a type alias for Union{ASCIIString,UTF8String}, i.e. strings that can be passed to C directly.
• WString: an alias for UTF16String if Cwchart_t is two bytes (i.e. Windows) or UTF32String otherwise.
• RepString: a string type for efficient handling of repeated strings.

LegacyStrings also defines and exports converter functions for these types, i.e.:

• ascii: convert to ASCIIString; since Base exports an ascii function as well, you must explicitly do import LegacyStrings: ascii or write LegacyStrings.ascii in order to use this function rather than Base.ascii.
• utf8: convert to UTF8String.
• utf16: convert to UTF16String.
• utf32: convert to UTF32String.
• wstring: alias for utf16 or utf32 according to what WString is an alias to.