> > Any reason for force_encoding(nil) instead of force_encoding("binary")?
> 
> I guess I just expected it to work that way.  It also has the benefit of 
> not requiring the creation of a string object to name the encoding. 
> Speaking of which, why are encoding names strings rather than symbols?


If I may chime in here, some encoding names include non-symbol symbols,
e.g. "-" in "iso-" encodings. I'm not sure how easy it is to consider
binary/ascii to be the "native" encoding in some situations, but I agree
that I think setting the encoding of a string to 'nil' does seem to
imply it's in a raw(binary) form.

 - Arlen.