From: "mame (Yusuke Endoh)" <mame@...>
Date: 2012-07-23T23:21:37+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:46658] [ruby-trunk - Feature #6361][Rejected] Bitwise string operations


Issue #6361 has been updated by mame (Yusuke Endoh).

Status changed from Feedback to Rejected

Martin Bosslet and Joshua Ballanco,

Sorry but this proposal was rejected at the developer meeting (7/21).

Matz explicitly said he will not accept another class than String.
He hates Python way.


Two additional notes:

* The original request (bitwise string operation) was not considered
  because it is not essential for ByteString; if you want, please file
  a new ticket for the specific feature with the detailed spec including
  corner cases (e.g., [ruby-core:44646]).

* Matz wants to save the motivating example in the slide (below)
  in other approach than the proposal:

    "\xff".force_encoding("BINARY") << "\xff"
      #=> incompatible character encodings:
          ASCII-8BIT and UTF-8 (Encoding::CompatibilityError)

  We discussed three approaches:

  1. adding String#b that returns BINARY string:

    "\xff".force_encoding("BINARY") << "\xff".b

  2. adding a new `percent' syntax for binary string:

    "\xff".force_encoding("BINARY") << %b{\xff}

  3. suppressing the exception in some way

  Some people (including Matz) liked (3), but akr showed strong objection
  because it causes breaking a character (Sorry I didn't understand his
  opinion precisely).  (2) is difficult because of syntax extension.
  So we are now keen on (1).
  This is discussed in #6767 (Sorry, in Japanese!)

-- 
Yusuke Endoh <mame@tsg.ne.jp>
----------------------------------------
Feature #6361: Bitwise string operations
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6361#change-28324

Author: MartinBosslet (Martin Bosslet)
Status: Rejected
Priority: Normal
Assignee: 
Category: core
Target version: 


I know this has been discussed a lot in the past (and if there's still 
an open issue for this, I apologize, I couldn't find one), for example
in [1]. While it is generally no problem to implement this on the fly,
I still find that built-in support would be a real improvement. There
are quite some use cases in cryptography where this would come in very
handy, but I'm sure there are lots of other areas, too.

While of course I understand the reasons that were given in the previous
threads that ultimately lead to rejection, I still would like to reopen
the discussion as I felt that in every thread so far the consensus was
that having bitwise string operations would indeed be quite valuable. 

[1] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-core/34586


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