From: Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@...>
Date: 2006-06-26T07:56:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Unicode roadmap?

Hi,

In message "Re: Unicode roadmap?"
    on Mon, 26 Jun 2006 05:38:46 +0900, "Charles O Nutter" <headius@headius.com> writes:

|When is a ByteArray not a ByteArray? When is a String not a String? Is it
|correct to mingle the two concepts perpetually, when they each have fairly
|specific definitions? My problem with continuing to treat String as a byte
|vector is that it forces two somewhat incompatible concepts on the same
|class and the same methods.

A string is a sequence of data that can be represented by small
integers.  Some may want to treat them as CharacterStrings, other may
want to treat them ByteStrings.  They are not different as you say.
On many platforms, a file can contain text data or binary data.  Is a
chunk of data read from a open file a text, or binary?  If you
separate ByteArray and (Character) String, you will need to have two
separate IO classes, BinaryIO and TextIO, etc.  Or you will need
explicit conversion from read ByteArray to CharacterString.  That
makes Ruby programs look a lot like Java programs, which I don't want
them to be.

One of the good property of Ruby class library is a small number of
classes.  A class might have multiple roles.  For example, a Ruby
Array can be treated as Stacks, Queues, etc.  And it is a good thing,
rather than having separate classes for each role.  Why can't Strings
be both sequence of text and binary data?

							matz.