[ruby-core:18780] Re: Character encodings - a less radical suggestion

On Mon, 22 Sep 2008 12:51:19 +1000, James Gray <[e-mail]>  
wrote:

> On Sep 21, 2008, at 9:35 PM, Martin Duerst wrote:
>
>> In terms of potential problems, I see the following:
>> - A library sets Encoding::default_internal. That would lead
>>  to serious problems, and should be clearly advised against
>>  in the documentation. Libraries either have to be written
>>  in a general way, or have to document that they only work
>>  with certain values of Encoding::default_internal
>>  (this proposal would therefore help you, but not e.g.
>>   James Gray for the CVS library)
>
> I really think this a bigger minus than this implies.  I can name a lot  
> of libraries that just flat out expect UTF-8 and choke and die on  
> anything else.  Ruby 1.8 has trained us to think this way for many years.

That is very true, but the situation exists independent of  
"default_internal". The mere fact that Ruby supports multiple encodings  
means that every library *should* check the encodings of strings passed to  
it and do the appropriate thing, unless it is acceptable to just let an  
"Encoding Capability Error" be raised.

> Now, if someone were to change Encoding.default_interal then all these  
> libraries will unexpectedly having data changed on them.  I'm pretty  
> sure that would cause massive damage.

Also very true, but people can do all sorts of stupid things that will  
make things break. Normally you would expect that "default_internal" would  
be set once at the very start, but who are we to enforce that - one day  
someone will want to change it mid-stream and probably for a good reason!

Mike.