[ruby-core:107517] [Ruby master Feature#18576] Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY`

Issue #18576 has been updated by naruse (Yui NARUSE).


duerst (Martin D端rst) wrote in #note-1:
> Well, it's actually not just binary. Binary would mean that none of the bytes have any 'meaning' (i.e. characters) assigned to them. But ASCII-8BIT actually has character 'meaning' assigned to the ASCII range.

I agree the principle.
But we should consider this proposal as "ASCII range of binary data in the world is usually ASCII. Why you call them as complex name: ASCII-8BIT?"

I think the name of the encoding is a communication tool. We should compare pros and cons between ASCII-8BIT and BINARY.

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Feature #18576: Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY`
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18576#change-96422

* Author: byroot (Jean Boussier)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
----------------------------------------
### Context

I'm now used to it, but something that confused me for years was errors such as:

```ruby
>> "f辿e" + "\xFF".b
(irb):3:in `+': incompatible character encodings: UTF-8 and ASCII-8BIT (Encoding::CompatibilityError)
```

When you aren't that familiar with Ruby, it's really not evident that `ASCII-8BIT` basically means "no encoding" or "binary".

And even when you know it, if you don't read carefully it's very easily confused with `US-ASCII`.

The `Encoding::BINARY` alias is much more telling IMHO.

### Proposal

Since `Encoding::ASCII_8BIT` has been aliased as `Encoding::BINARY` for years, I think renaming it to `BINARY` and then making asking `ASCII_8BIT` the alias would significantly improve usability without backward compatibility concerns.

The only concern I could see would be the consistency with a handful of C API functions:

  - `rb_encoding *rb_ascii8bit_encoding(void)`
  - `int rb_ascii8bit_encindex(void)`
  - `VALUE rb_io_ascii8bit_binmode(VALUE io)`

But that's for much more advanced users, so I don't think it's much of a concern.




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