On 12/2/07, Daniel DeLorme <dan-ml / dan42.com> wrote:
> I know it's kinda late to make any changes to the 1.9 roadmap, so I'm
> not hoping to change anything, but there's this *tiny* thing I'm worried
> about with m17n: depending on the string's encoding, methods like
> String#index will return either byte position or character positions.
> Since a Fixnum cannot carry information about where it came from, isn't
> there the risk of opening a whole new *class* of bugs where a
> character-position integer is fed to a byte-encoded string method and
> vice-versa? Has this been encountered or has there been too little
> experience with m17n strings or am I just too paranoid?

No. #index always returns character position; it just so happens that
some encodings use bytes for their character position.

> Disclaimer: ultimately I am a curmudgeon who believes m17n strings are a
> (too-)ambitious technical solution to a social problem ;-P

I think that m17n is a better solution than Unicode all the time given
the amount of legacy data out there, despite the definite value of
Unicode as a long-term solution.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue / gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
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