[ruby-core:116855] [Ruby master Feature#18576] Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY`

["Dan0042 (Daniel DeLorme) via ruby-core" <ruby-core@ml.ruby-lang.org>]

Issue #18576 has been updated by Dan0042 (Daniel DeLorme).





I've come to realize something; when an ASCII-8BIT string contains only ascii characters, it behaves exactly like a US-ASCII string and in such a case it feels unnatural to call it "binary" (at least for me). But as soon as there is a non-ascii byte, it becomes incompatible with every other encoding and then truly deserves to be called BINARY. And that's when encoding errors occur. So in error messages, "BINARY" makes perfect sense to me since the error occurs due to the string being in "binary" state rather than "ascii-only" state. The distinction may be irrelevant to others but at least it has helped me put into words and understand why it felt so uncomfortable to change the name to "BINARY". Just my 2¢



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Feature #18576: Rename `ASCII-8BIT` encoding to `BINARY`

https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/18576#change-106887



* Author: byroot (Jean Boussier)

* Status: Open

* Priority: Normal

* Target version: 3.4

----------------------------------------

### Context



I'm now used to it, but something that confused me for years was errors such as:



```ruby

>> "fée" + "\xFF".b

(irb):3:in `+': incompatible character encodings: UTF-8 and ASCII-8BIT (Encoding::CompatibilityError)

```



When you aren't that familiar with Ruby, it's really not evident that `ASCII-8BIT` basically means "no encoding" or "binary".



And even when you know it, if you don't read carefully it's very easily confused with `US-ASCII`.



The `Encoding::BINARY` alias is much more telling IMHO.



### Proposal



Since `Encoding::ASCII_8BIT` has been aliased as `Encoding::BINARY` for years, I think renaming it to `BINARY` and then making asking `ASCII_8BIT` the alias would significantly improve usability without backward compatibility concerns.



The only concern I could see would be the consistency with a handful of C API functions:



  - `rb_encoding *rb_ascii8bit_encoding(void)`

  - `int rb_ascii8bit_encindex(void)`

  - `VALUE rb_io_ascii8bit_binmode(VALUE io)`



But that's for much more advanced users, so I don't think it's much of a concern.









-- 

https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/

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