On 17/06/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue / gmail.com> wrote:
> > - This ties Ruby's String to Unicode. A safe choice IMHO, or would we
> > really consider something else? Note that we don't commit to a
> > particular encoding of Unicode strongly.
>
> This is a wash. I think that it's better to leave the options open.
> After all, it *is* a hope of mine to have Ruby running on iSeries
> (AS/400) and *that* still uses EBCDIC.

Not to mention that Matz has explicitly stated in the past that he
wants Ruby to support other encodings (TRON, Mojikyo, etc.) that
aren't compatible with a Unicode internal representation.

Not tying String to Unicode is also the right thing to do: it allows
for future developments. Java's weird encoding system is entirely down
to the fact that it standardised on UCS-2; when codepoints beyond
65535 arrived, they had to be shoehorned in via an ugly hack. As far
as possible, Ruby should avoid that trap.

Paul.