From: Patrick Okui <pokui@...>
Date: 2009-09-02T18:18:57+09:00
Subject: Re: how to convert string to binary and back in Ruby 1.9?


On Sep 2, 2009, at 2:55 AM, Joe wrote:

> On Sep 1, 4:18 pm, Iñaki Baz Castillo <i...@aliax.net> wrote:
>> El Miércoles, 2 de Septiembre de 2009, Joe escribió:
>
>> In the other way, #encode does change the encoding, and it fails if  
>> the
>> conversion is not possible.
>>
>> --
>> Iñaki Baz Castillo <i...@aliax.net>
>
> OK, so String#force_encoding just changes the encoding, but does not
> alter the string.  But how does it decide to print as the same
> sequence of Cyrillic characters, when it thinks its encoding is
> ISO-8859-1?  How does ruby1.9 decide what characters to display when
> printing a String?  Surely it must adhere to the encoding of that
> String?  Is ruby storing the ISO-8859-1 encoded string as a sequence
> of unicode characters, or what?

Brian Candler did a pretty thorough documentation of 1.9's M17N at http://github.com/candlerb/string19 
  . There are also multiple sources of documentation on the subject at http://blog.grayproductions.net/articles/what_ruby_19_gives_us 
  (Edward Gray) and elsewhere.

I'm also more comfortable with how 1.8 behaves but then again I'm a  
newbie here.

Patrick