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To: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
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Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 21:36:30 +0000
References: <4794AE48.20005@daylessday.org>    <38791.98.193.37.55.1201055548.squirrel@www.l-i-e.com>    <e2e02fe0801231114vb4c7a15r6d037867972ad4e5@mail.gmail.com>    <47979570.4010703@lerdorf.com> <1201.209.254.223.2.1201118608.squirrel@www.l-i-e.com> <4797A1BD.2050803@lerdorf.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] why we must get rid of unicode.semantics switch ASAP
From: foolistbar@googlemail.com (Geoffrey Sneddon)


On 23 Jan 2008, at 20:21, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:

> u"foo" is a hack that will eventually disappear from the various =20
> languages that have it or something similar.

I think we need to have binary strings as default with u"=85" for a =20
while (whenever that gets merged into the default string type it is =20
probably the real time to break everything without too much regard for =20=

backwards compatibility at all =97 I don't think this time has come yet, =
=20
though), without any switch to change that.

To note: Python introduced support for Unicode in 2.0 (released 2000), =20=

and Unicode strings are the default in 3.0 (as of 2007-12-07 alpha 2) =20=

=97 the current plan is to release 3.0 final in mid-2008; this is eight =20=

years between adding Unicode support and it becoming the default =97 =20
following this precedent would result in Unicode becoming default in =20
PHP at the very earliest of 2016, though I think quite such a long =20
delay in the case of PHP wouldn't be the best for the language, but I =20=

doubt we can do it much quicker than around four years (without the =20
benefits outweighing the issues it will cause).

> Unfortunately 10 years ago, I wasn't very concerned about that.

10 years ago, not all too many people were with scripting languages, =20
which is part of the reason why (scripting) languages with native =20
Unicode support are only just starting to real take off, as they will, =20=

even though we will have Unicode support in PHP 6, have more mature =20
implementations than we will.


--
Geoffrey Sneddon
<http://gsnedders.com/>