From h.wickham at gmail.com  Fri Dec 12 15:00:05 2014
From: h.wickham at gmail.com (Hadley Wickham)
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 08:00:05 -0600
Subject: [Rd] SUGGESTION: Force install.packages() to use ASCII encoding
 when parse():ing code?
In-Reply-To: <20141212123404.GC14760@localhost>
References: <CAFDcVCSgxuDLTLQQFg8w2m_e2CB7sn7zdRdQHjGqJc0wbueEtg@mail.gmail.com>
	<5489E6AE.9060002@gmail.com> <s3s4mt11bb5.fsf@slagelg.uio.no>
	<548ACB02.5050906@gmail.com> <20141212123404.GC14760@localhost>
Message-ID: <CABdHhvFJ_KXgg3Nmud5xoXX5U6DidWjJ99UWkoVHdCrTncaQ+g@mail.gmail.com>

> I'm would perhaps not go as far as calling them dangerous, but non-ASCII
> characters in code are a mixed blessing which personally I'd opt to not
> have, on balance. Being German I can understand that people may want
> umlauted characters in their variable names, but where this catches on,
> it's just a matter of time that people get characters into their code that
> are different but indistinguishable in the font they use (I've seen this
> with \H{o} rather than a \"{o}), and mega-personmonths are wasted puzzling
> over tracking down these problems.

Related: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDN_homograph_attack

Hadley

-- 
http://had.co.nz/



[Rd] SUGGESTION: Force install.packages() to use ASCII encoding when parse():ing code?
Hadley Wickham