From: Dae San Hwang <daesan@...>
Date: 2006-06-15T00:47:12+09:00
Subject: Re: A plan for another unicode string hack

On Jun 14, 2006, at 11:56 PM, Logan Capaldo wrote:

>
> On Jun 14, 2006, at 10:47 AM, Dae San Hwang wrote:
>
>> The reason I'm differentiating between 'size' and 'length' is  
>> because some libraries (like rails) depend on them returning the  
>> byte size of the string. Maybe we can establish a customs that  
>> 'size' for byte size and 'length' for the number of characters.  
>> Same reasoning goes for '[]' and 'slice'.
>
> I like these very much. Although the choice between [] and slice  
> seem arbitrary (i.e. you could have swapped their meanings and it  
> would have made just as much sense). #size vs. #length is perfect.  
> and #[] being a Fixnum when their was no encoding but a character  
> when there is is equally brilliant. I salute you sir!
>

Thanks for the kind words.

The reason I picked [] for encoding aware method is because String# 
[index] will be used to extract the letter and not the byte in Ruby  
2.0 as mentioned in http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/ 
futurismUnicodeInRuby.html

   so that "abc"[0] returns "a" instead of fixnum 97

A way to get a Nth byte of a byte buffer is probably still necessary  
and String#slice seems to be the logical one, I thought.


Dae San Hwang
daesan@gmail.com