From: "tenderlovemaking (Aaron Patterson)" Date: 2022-02-09T16:52:29+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:107531] [Ruby master Feature#18576] Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY` Issue #18576 has been updated by tenderlovemaking (Aaron Patterson). First, I agree with this proposal. Second, I think this example should raise an exception: ```ruby u = (b = "abcde".force_encoding('ASCII-8BIT')).encode('UTF-8') ``` But I can open a different ticket for that. The point I actually want to make is that I've never seen this use case in the wild. 100% of the cases I've seen for `force_encoding('ASCII-8BIT')` are when the developer knows the string is binary (or unknown) data and they want to treat it as binary / unknown data *not* as "might be US-ASCII sometimes". The name "binary" would more accurately reflect real world usage IMO. ---------------------------------------- Feature #18576: Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18576#change-96443 * 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��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. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: