[rb-general] BUILD_PATH_PREFIX_MAP code examples and test cases

[Ximin Luo]

Ian Jackson:
> Ximin Luo writes ("[rb-general] BUILD_PATH_PREFIX_MAP code examples and test cases"):
>> I made some minor changes on top of the proposal from last time; the mapping is now:
>>
>> % -> %p
>> = -> %e
>> : -> %c
> 
> Please don't use letters (or underscore, or ideally, hyphens) for
> this.  There are all sorts of informal and semi-formal string handling
> algorithms that depend on finding the boundaries of `words' consisting
> of alphanumerics.  They will not work right, generating an endless
> stream of low-level lossage for human expert users writing ad-hoc
> regexps, doing cut and paste, and so on.
> 
> These approaches can also mislead wetware and sometimes cause false
> matches in software.  (These problem are evident in QP- and
> URL-encodings.)
> 

Do you have a specific proposal to make along these lines?

This isn't meant to be a generic communications encoding, I don't know why anyone would do what you're suggesting, and the % character (or any other reasonable character we could use) would already mess with "word boundary" algorithms.

X

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