From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2006-06-29T02:33:36+09:00
Subject: Re: Unicode roadmap?

On 6/28/06, Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
>| I have suggested to Matz that we adopt the u"string" format so that
>| we have a literal constructor for Unicode strings (which is by far
>| the more common need).
> I am not sure how much this is more useful than usual string literals
> plus unicode encoding pragma.

I'm not sure I like the encoding pragma, personally, since it's at the
file level. Consider this:

  raise "Not PNG." unless @top[0, 8] == "\x89PNG\x0d\x0a\x1a\x0a"

If I understand the encoding pragma correctly, both the "Not PNG" and
the matching string will be treated as Unicode, and the test string is
not valid Unicode.

Better, from my perspective:

  raise u"Not PNG." unless @top[0, 8] == "\x89PNG\x0d\x0a\x1a\x0a"

That way, I *mark* the strings for which I want Unicode format. The
encoding pragma makes it hard to do mixed content files.

(This example, by the way, is *specifically* artificial, but the code
involved is real. It's image matching code with error messages if
there's a mismatch.)

-austin
-- 
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