From: "larskanis (Lars Kanis)" Date: 2022-03-17T15:06:33+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:107956] [Ruby master Feature#18576] Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY` Issue #18576 has been updated by larskanis (Lars Kanis). Having solved a lot of encoding issues for co-workers, especially on Windows, I'm with @Eregon. As the programmers best friend, I think it's worth to try out this minor incompatibility. At least compared to something like the [removal of rb_cData](https://github.com/ruby/ruby/commit/7c738ce5e649b82bdc1305d5c347e81886ee759a) which breaks lots of older gems, just for cleaning up the C-API (after 2 years of deprecation warnings). ---------------------------------------- Feature #18576: Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY` https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18576#change-96906 * 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: