Re: New invalid UTF-8 proposal using tags and %nn

On Fri, 2009-09-04 at 16:48 -0400, Brad R wrote:

> It is also entirely possible for a library to expose options to the
> application about how to handle the new data type. Options that a
> library might expose include:
> 
> 1) Always return it as a byte array (I think this should be the
> default and required behavior)

This is the key point. Anything else is optional and completely up to
the library. For example:

> 2) Throw exceptions/Raise errors if it can't convert it to a valid
> string (so if an application only wants to deal with strings, it can)

Sure, this is a possible API. IMO this defeats the whole purpose of this
tag. It is a safe working assumption that if this tag is used, the
string will not be valid (Unicode). But sure, a library could provide
it.

> Is this something that the YAML spec needs to cover, though?

Most emphatically *no*. The YAML spec defines the data model. As long as
the data is preserved, the implementation is compliant. In fact the
whole !!utf-u tag is out of scope for the spec itself, just like !!
binary and a zillion others.

Have fun,

    Oren Ben-Kiki


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