From: Martin Duerst <duerst@...>
Date: 2007-12-12T19:16:27+09:00
Subject: Encoding and test::unit

[I'm posting this to ruby-core rather than ruby-dev,
where most of the internationalization-related discussion
is taking place, and I'm also copying Nathaniel because
I'm not sure he is on this list.]

Starting to implement character encoding conversions
(String#encode) in Ruby, I of course also started to
do some testing. I run across some cases where I got
messages such as:

<"D\xfcrst"> expected but was
<"D\xfcrst">.

What's going on, and how to deal with it, is rather
clear to me, but for the average user, such a message
will be very confusing. What I'd like to have is something
like:

<"D\xfcrst" (encoding: ASCII-8BIT)> expected but was
<"D\xfcrst" (encoding: ISO-8859-3)>.

On the other hand, it would look somewhat silly if messages
such as:

<"foo"> expected but was
<"bar">.

were suddenly reading:

<"foo" (encoding: ASCII-8BIT)> expected but was
<"bar" (encoding: ASCII-8BIT)>.

I have had a quick look at lib/test/unit/assertions.rb,
but it doesn't look clear how this could be fixed the
way I think it should (and I'm also not sure everybody
will agree that my way is the 'best' way).

Regards,    Martin.


#-#-#  Martin J. Du"rst, Assoc. Professor, Aoyama Gakuin University
#-#-#  http://www.sw.it.aoyama.ac.jp       mailto:duerst@it.aoyama.ac.jp