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Postings from July 2021
> On Jul 30, 2021, at 10:45 AM, Ricardo Signes <perl.p5p@rjbs.manxome.org> wrote: > > Porters, > > I propose that "use v5.36.0" should imply that the source code is, subsequently, UTF-8 encoded. > > Currently, I advise the following boilerplate: > use v5.34.0; > use warnings; > use utf8; > > > We're on the cusp or merging warnings in. Next, we merge in utf8. This shouldn't break existing programs, only programs that opt to change behavior by adding v5.36.0. FWIW, I think this will regress Perl’s usability. Probably the worst part about character encoding in Perl is that nothing indicates when you’ve over-encoded or under-encoded. But, at the very least everything right now is consistent by default: source code is parsed as bytes (“Latin-1”), and I/O happens as bytes. Thus, a “minimal-effort” approach to writing Perl will at least minimize the odds of encoding mismatches: you only run into trouble if you explicitly decode/encode. If `use v5.36` is to disrupt that consistency by making source code UTF-8-decoded but *leaving* I/O as bytes, this seems likely to add another “shin-bumper” to use of Perl that doesn’t happen in languages that type byte strings differently from text strings. So quick-and-simple things like `print "é"` will now, in “modern” Perl, break, with no indication of where/why until a human being comes along, notices the problem, and puts in the time to debug it. It’s going to be particularly problematic with stuff like `mkdir "épée" because now we’re *really* expecting the SvPV bug--where we give the raw PV to the kernel/OS--to stick around. UTF-8 decoding by default is a fine idea, but until Perl can tell me the difference between a byte string and a character string, I think the change would yield more harm than good. -FGThread Previous | Thread Next