Issue #6979 has been updated by drbrain (Eric Hodel). Status changed from Open to Rejected Ruby 1.8.7 is at EOL and only accepts security fixes at this time. Please upgrade to ruby 1.9. http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/news/2011/10/06/plans-for-1-8-7/ ---------------------------------------- Bug #6979: Multibyte-Strings https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/6979#change-29175 Author: karsten (karsten e) Status: Rejected Priority: Normal Assignee: Category: Target version: Ruby 1.8.7 ruby -v: ruby 1.8.7 (2012-06-29 patchlevel 370) [i686-linux] ruby 1.8 does not handle multibyte strings properly. UTF-8 contains max 4 bytes/charekter. They need to be handled separately in ruby 1.8 (This is fixed in ruby 1.9) -- http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/