From: Leslie Viljoen <leslieviljoen@...>
Date: 2006-06-15T18:43:59+09:00
Subject: Re: A plan for another unicode string hack

On 6/15/06, Paul Battley <pbattley@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/06/06, Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> > |I agree with Austin on this - the distinction is too vague. I'd leave
> > |length and size the same and make a size_in_bytes method.
> >
> > On my latest prototype (not checked in anywhere), String#length and
> > String#size behave same, and there is String#buffer_size to return
> > size in bytes.  The method name might change in the future.
>
> Actually, this makes a lot of sense. Why would you ever want to know
> the actual byte length of a UTF-8 string? It's pretty meaningless for
> most string-processing tasks: the main times you would need it would
> be in allocation and interfacing with external systems and libraries.
> Thus, something like buffer_size maps to real-world usage extremely
> well, in my opinion.

Of course the confusion here is caused by measurement units. Size in
bytes or size in characters? Length and size don't (clearly) indictate
that distinction, and neither does buffer_size. The name should
indicate the unit so that you could immediately see that adding (eg.)
length_in_characters to length_in_bytes would be in error.

Here's some naming convention insight:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Wrong.html

Les