From: Stefan Schmiedl <s@...>
Date: 2007-03-04T02:50:05+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby, irb and iconv with translit

On Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:33:18 +0100, Stefan Schmiedl wrote:

> Greetings.
> 
> I've been trying to find out why sorting a list of German names failed
> on both my local Gentoo box and my remote Debian server. Can somebody
> please explain the following in simple words?
> 
> $ ruby -v
> ruby 1.8.5 (2006-12-25 patchlevel 12) [x86_64-linux] $ irb -v
> irb 0.9.5(05/04/13)
> 
> 
> $ cat test.rb | irb
>>> $KCODE='u'
> => "u"
>>> require "iconv"
> => true
>>> $conv  = Iconv.new("ASCII//TRANSLIT", "UTF-8")
> => #<Iconv:0x2ace62d57090>
>>> $arg = "辰rger"
> => "辰rger"
>>> $asc = $conv.iconv($arg)
> => "?rger"
>>> puts $asc.size
> 5
> 
> ok, translit fails. This might be a bug somewhere, but then why does the
> following work, where I called iconv interactively, but with the same
> string?
> 
> $ irb -r test.rb
> 5
>>> watch_this = $conv.iconv($arg)
> => "aerger"
>>> watch_this.size
> => 6
> 

Another facet of the problem:

$ irb -r test
5
$ irb 
>> require "test"
6
=> true

I'd really like to know what irb does to make iconv behave...
s.