From: Markus Fischer <markus@...>
Date: 2011-03-23T08:24:38+09:00
Subject: Re: A question about Ruby 1.9's "external encoding"

On 21.03.2011 16:00, Robert Klemme wrote:
> For me this boils down to these rules:
> 
> 1. Strings are sequences of bytes
> 
> 2. Strings have an associated encoding which does not need to match
> the actual encoding of the binary content
> 
> 3. In absence of a target (external or internal, depending on
> direction) encoding IO operations use a String's binary data as is,
> otherwise they try to convert between encodings and raise an error if
> that is not possible.

Is it just me or does this, especially point 2, sound highly confusing
if not dangerous?

- Markus