From: Gregory Brown <gregory.t.brown@...>
Date: 2009-08-13T23:48:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Setting Default Character Encodings ruby 1.9

On Thu, Aug 13, 2009 at 10:39 AM, Andrew
Barringer<abarringer@bsecure.com> wrote:
> This is probably something stupid simple I'm overlooking.. but.. here it
> goes.
>
>
>
> I'm trying to set the default character encoding at the command line
> like this:
>
>
>
> ruby19 -E ASCII-8BIT:ASCII-8BIT scratch.rb
>
>
>
> my scratch.rb file has the following line:
>
>
>
> p __ENCODING__
>
>
>
> The output is always this:
>
>
>
> #<Encoding:US-ASCII>

Hi, this is because -E sets the internal/external encodings.  If you
want to set the source encoding, you need to do this with a magic
comment.
If you want ASCII-8BIT, the first line of your source file would look like this:

# encoding: ASCII-8BIT.

For more on encodings in Ruby 1.9, you should definitely JEG2's blog series:
http://blog.grayproductions.net/categories/character_encodings

You can also read the m17n chapter of my book:
http://rubybestpractices.com

-greg