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Postings from July 2017
On Sat, Jul 1, 2017 at 6:03 PM, via RT <perlbug-followup@perl.org> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> This is continuation from original discussion about renaming
> utf8::is_utf8() to utf8::is_upgraded() which can be found at:
> https://www.nntp.perl.org/group/perl.perl5.porters/2017/02/msg243068.html
>
> Problem is that in more perl modules is used this incorrect code
> pattern:
>
> use utf8;
>
> my $value = func();
> if (utf8::is_utf8($value)) {
> utf8::encode($value);
> }
>
> In most cases module developers think that utf8::is_utf8() returns true
> when it is needed to manually encode argument into UTF-8 bytes. Which is
> of course wrong.
>
> Reason for this is poor name of function utf8::is_utf8() and also poor
> documentation about this function.
>
> Functions utf8::is_utf8(), utf8::upgrade() and utf8::downgrade() changes
> internal string representation, which is fully invisible for pure perl
> code, and therefore I think all those functions should be in Internals
> namespace.
>
> I'm proposing following rename of functions:
>
> utf8::is_utf8() --> Internals::uses_string_wide_storage()
> utf8::upgrade() --> Internals::upgrade_string_to_wide_storage()
> utf8::downgrade() --> Internals::downgrade_string_from_wide_storage()
>
> Plus adding backward compatible aliases to make existing code works like
> before.
>
> As all those functions should be used only for debugging purposes (e.g.
> test cases for XS code) or when dealing with buggy XS module, I'm
> proposing starting to throw warning (e.g. since v5.28.0) when those
> functions are called. For those who are dealing with internals, can turn
> warning off by no warnings 'experimental::internal';
>
> I'm attaching patches which:
>
> * Add new warning category 'experimental::internal'
> * Rename utf8 functions
> * Update perldoc utf8 documentation
>
I don't see how this is an option. I'll grant you that something like this
would have been a better option back then but you're 15 years too late.
"This would have been better" is no excuse to break a decade and a half of
software.
Leon
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