From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2002-01-30T02:39:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Subrange of String subclass => invalid object

matz@ruby-lang.org (Yukihiro Matsumoto) writes:

> No.  Considering multilingualization issues, character class is a gate
> to the hell.  No one agrees with each other.  I'd like to leave Char
> class to the users.

Matz:

I know absolutely nothing about m17n, so forgive me if this is
naive. In Unicode, I believe that it is possible for two 'characters'
to be equal even if their bit patterns are different: there are
different ways of representing the ways that the characters are
constructed. Might that be an argument in favor of a character class,
so that

   str.char_at(i)  #=> aChar

and aChar retains sufficient information from the String to allow

   aChar == otherChar

to be evaluated correctly?


I know you live with this nightmare daily, and you've thought this
through a lot more than I have, but as the encodings get more complex,
doesn't the need for Char increase. After all, there are both sins of
commission and sins of omission, and both lead us to the same gate :)



Dave