From: "sawa (Tsuyoshi Sawada)" <sawadatsuyoshi@...>
Date: 2013-11-15T00:04:21+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:58339] [ruby-trunk - Feature #9111] Encoding-free String	comparison


Issue #9111 has been updated by sawa (Tsuyoshi Sawada).


Following nobu's suggestion, I came up with the following several possibilities:

When two strings with different encodings are to be compared by `String#<=>`, then one of the following options should be taken:

* Raise a Warning message
* Raise an error
* Convert one of the strings to the other one.

I am not sure which option would be the best, but feel the feature should not be left as is now.
----------------------------------------
Feature #9111: Encoding-free String comparison
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/9111#change-42937

Author: sawa (Tsuyoshi Sawada)
Status: Open
Priority: Normal
Assignee: 
Category: 
Target version: 


=begin
Currently, strings with the same content but with different encodings count as different strings. This causes strange behaviour as below (noted in StackOverflow question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19977788/strange-behavior-in-packed-ruby-strings#19978206):

    [128].pack("C")             # => "\x80"
    [128].pack("C") == "\x80"   # => false

Since `[128].pack("C")` has the encoding ASCII-8BIT and `"\x80"` (by default) has the encoding UTF-8, the two strings are not equal.

Also, comparison of strings with different encodings may end up with a messy, unintended result.

I suggest that the comparison `String#<=>` should not be based on the respective encoding of the strings, but all the strings should be internally converted to UTF-8 for the purpose of comparison.


=end


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