From: Martin Duerst <duerst@...>
Date: 2008-10-10T16:23:18+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:19270] Re: default_internal encoding

At 03:11 08/10/10, Dave Thomas wrote:
>I'm documenting default_internal for the PickAxe, and have a couple of  
>questions:
>
>1. Right now I can set it via -E ext:int.  However, I don't seem able  
>to set it via the magic comment.
>
>   # encoding: iso-8859-1:utf-8
>   p __ENCODING__     #=> iso-8859-1
>   p Encoding.default_internal  #=> nil

I have followed the ruby-dev discussion fairly closely, but
it always revolved around using #!, not some magic comment.
Akira and Nobu and me had to convince Matz that it would make
sense to merge a setting of -E default-external on the actual
command line with a setting -E :default-internal when using #!,
because that's what we thought where the information would
most probably come from.

Using the magic comment wasn't discussed explicitly as far as
I remember, and I assume the reasons behind this are that
magic comments are a last-resort evil, and that any impression
that default_internal would vary per source file would be
very wrong.

>2. Matz was talking about adding a -U command line option. Will that  
>be added at some point?

This was discussed extensively, and although several people on
ruby-dev questioned its utility, my understanding was that Matz
will implement this, probably in the next few days. But of course,
I'm not speaking for Matz, so I might be wrong (I hope I'll be right :-).

Regards,   Martin.



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