From: Tanaka Akira <akr@...>
Date: 2007-11-12T23:54:21+09:00
Subject: Re: primary encoding and source encoding

In article <dbfc82860711120147n51085e8dm57039b6edf400e28@mail.gmail.com>,
  "Nikolai Weibull" <now@bitwi.se> writes:

> On Nov 12, 2007 5:59 AM, Nobuyoshi Nakada <nobu@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
>
>> Move to `IO.default_encoding'?
>>
>> BTW, I've felt the name Encoding.primary_encoding redundant a
>> little.
>
> Why not simply Encoding.default?

It doesn't represent the purpose:
"The role for the primary encoding is the default for file
I/O, nothing more."

Encoding.primary_encoding tends to used for different
purpose.  For example, Integer#chr and \u.
I guess such behaviors make a library tends to work only
with a specific primary encoding.
-- 
Tanaka Akira