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Re: Proposal: Rename utf8::is_utf8() to utf8::is_upgraded()

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From:
Kent Fredric
Date:
February 20, 2017 20:46
Subject:
Re: Proposal: Rename utf8::is_utf8() to utf8::is_upgraded()
Message ID:
CAATnKFAAQZ7Pyv0rYrqH3e2a0bCvPyJApS9e_-o0sWJLxNzfLg@mail.gmail.com
On 21 February 2017 at 01:55, Leon Timmermans <fawaka@gmail.com> wrote:
> which doesn't fit in a function description.

I'd start by saying that this function has no bearing on whether the
*data* in the scalar is actually utf8 encoded or not.

That's what most people are thinking I think, that this is a query
about the *content* of the string, when that state
is independent of the state of this flag.

As an analogy, its about as useful as poking in perl internals to see
if a scalar is a PVIV  or not and assuming because its the string "0"
and hte IV slot hasn't been filled yet, that its "not a number" ...
which is useful, but not to people who are simply wanting to see if a
value is safe for math or not.

As another analogy, utf8ness of strings is like signedness of ints in C.

If somebody unpacked 4 bytes of data into an unsigned-int when they
should have unpacked it into a signed int, the language will treat the
data wrong. *asking* "is it a signed int" doesn't reallly tell us
anything except about the container. However, if you know there's 4
bytes of data sitting around in an unsigned int which is really a
signed int, you can locally say "ok, use signed int logic here"

So with that said:


 *   "$flag = utf8::is_upgraded($string)"

         (Since Perl 5.28) Test whether $string 's internal bytes are marked
         for interpretation via utf8 semantics or not. Note this bears
no impact on whether that
         data is actually utf8, only how perl functions such as
"length" should treat its bytes.

 *   "$flag = utf8::is_utf8($string)"
         (Since Perl 5.8.1) Compatibility-supporting (but poorly named) alias of
         utf8::is_upgraded


Its a bit wordy, but probably progress.

Though that said, I think we can find a clearer name than "is_upgraded"

-- 
Kent

KENTNL - https://metacpan.org/author/KENTNL

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