From: Alexey Petrushin Date: 2011-08-17T23:13:15+09:00 Subject: Re: How to send utf8 data to remote computer in ruby 1.9.2 > Hi, could you please point to the exact problem you mean related to Ruby 1.9 encoding? 1. There is no way to set default source encoding (supplying command-line option is very inconvenient way to do it). 2. So, You has to put this extra line to source files # encoding: utf-8 Actually, I even encounter an article when someone created rake task that reads all files in lib and prepend this line, and he's called it the 'progress'. Well if this is the measure of the "progress" then the Java with his bloated Code Generation tools should be scored as far more "progressive" than Ruby. In my point it's regress, not the progress. 2. There are problems with saving utf-8 characters in YAML 3. Why at all should I ever bother about encoding at these days? The only possible justification may be - the performance improvements, but Ruby is anyway slow, with or without any encoding optimization. According to TIOBE the Java user base, installation base and community are about 30 times bigger than Ruby, and there are only one available encoding - utf-8, and it's absolutely enough to cover all the possible use cases. In 99.9% of cases You use UTF and You are happy! So, why Ruby that positioned as simple and beautiful language have such messy situation with encoding, compared to "bloated Java"? -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.