From: "Eregon (Benoit Daloze)" Date: 2022-02-10T14:15:33+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:107553] [Ruby master Feature#18576] Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY` Issue #18576 has been updated by Eregon (Benoit Daloze). byroot (Jean Boussier) wrote in #note-12: > > though changing encoding.name may hit the compatibility issue. > > I personally don't think it's much of a concern I agree, this sounds very unlikely to cause compatibility issues, and if it does it would be extremely rare. I believe the vast majority of programs simply don't rely on `Encoding#name` values. (and of course `Encoding.find(name)` would still work for both `"binary"` & `"ascii-8bit"`) ---------------------------------------- Feature #18576: Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18576#change-96465 * 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: