From: Roger Pack <rogerdpack2@...>
Date: 2010-11-16T02:03:43+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:33199] Re: not use system for default encoding

A few reactions...

> == Option 2
>
>> Have a universally-compatible "BINARY" encoding.
>> Any operation between BINARY and FOO gives encoding BINARY,
>> and transcoding between BINARY and any other encoding is a null operation.

Is setting Encoding.default_external to BINARY the same effect as
this? (all strings will be binary, thus they will all have every
operation result in binary...)

> This will hide unexpectedly mixed BINARY string.
> You'll realize hard to debug such strings.

True hard to debug if several different encodings are merged.  Perhaps
you could make it "opt-in" to use this universal encoding proposed?

>> Open all files in BINARY mode, except where explicitly asked:
>> �File.open("/etc/passwd","r:locale")
>
> I want to do this if people accept this, but I think they don't.

I would accept it :)
Thanks for the feedback.  I think it only helps ruby get better.
Maybe another option is a command line switch like --binary_only
(avoids all encodings, does only ASCII-8BIT) or make it so that
setting Encoding.default_external and default_internal to ASCII-8BIT
would have the same effect...
Just thinking out loud.
Cheers!
-r