On Tue, May 20, 2008 at 7:10 AM, demerphq <demerphq@gmail.com> wrote: > 1. We don't have a binary data type. (We dont distinguish character > data from octet data and its easy to inadvertently cause one to be > treated as the other with surprising results.) I have been for some time in favor of introducing a string-of-characters data type which would be a tree of some kind rather than a contiguous block. So if new data is to be added to the internal representation of character-data data type, please include "make it a tree instead of a contiguous block" when considering architecture options. Advantages include: concatenation without copying; cleaner lvalue substring semantics; the possibility of internally compressing strings with lots of common bits in them; and certainly more (especially after four cups of coffee, he self-defeatingly blurted)