Re: Perl & unicode weirdness.

[Larry Wall <larry@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Feb 02, 2004 at 04:42:21PM -0500, Henry Spencer wrote:
: On Mon, 2 Feb 2004, Glenn Maynard wrote:
: > > (To avoid confusion, we don't call our encoding UTF-8.  We tend to
: > > say UTF-8 when we mean UTF-8, and "utf8" when we mean the more general
: > > not-necessarily-Unicode encoding.
: > 
: > This is an insane way to make a distinction, just as silly as trying to
: > differentiate between "kilobits" and "kilobytes" with "kb" and "kB".
: > Changing hyphens and case doesn't make distinctions or avoid confusion.
: 
: Yes, it would be better to call the more general encoding, say, UTF-P.

And I think that could be construed as "multiplication of entities".
Speaking as a representative of persons of limited genius, I would
say that the average Perl programmer is not at all interested in the
distinction, so the confusion is intentional and useful--except when
it's not, and then we have a designated way to talk about it.

It would also not be inaccurate to think of it as a small act of
civil disobedience on my part.  I expect to get busted occasionally. :-)

Larry

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