From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 29030 invoked from network); 23 Jun 1997 21:17:44 -0000 Received: from euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (list@130.207.146.50) by ns1.primenet.com.au with SMTP; 23 Jun 1997 21:17:44 -0000 Received: (from list@localhost) by euclid.skiles.gatech.edu (8.7.3/8.7.3) id RAA15082; Mon, 23 Jun 1997 17:11:31 -0400 (EDT) Resent-Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 17:11:31 -0400 (EDT) From: Zefram Message-Id: <21077.199706232115@stone.dcs.warwick.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Are completion and prompt expansion 8-bit clean? To: alainc@sangacorp.com Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 22:15:25 +0100 (BST) Cc: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu In-Reply-To: <19970623175721069.AAA128@[207.139.180.5]> from "Alain Caron" at Jun 23, 97 01:57:23 pm X-Loop: zefram@dcs.warwick.ac.uk X-Stardate: [-31]9529.42 X-Phase: The Moon is Waning Gibbous (88% of Full) X-US-Congress: Moronic fuckers X-Personality: INTJ X-This-is-not-HTML: Content-Type: text Resent-Message-ID: <"NnJEa1.0.Yh3.2Qkhp"@euclid> Resent-From: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu X-Mailing-List: archive/latest/3292 X-Loop: zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu Precedence: list Resent-Sender: zsh-workers-request@math.gatech.edu Alain Caron wrote: >Subject: Are completion and prompt expansion 8-bit clean? In one sense, yes: they can handle 8-bit data. In fact, they can handle arbitrary binary data. In another sense, no: they do not treat all 8-bit data as printable, even when the display will interpret them as Latin-1 or whatever. Unfortunately, Unix does not provide a way to find out what characters are printable on a particular display device, so we have to choose in the source which characters zsh will treat as printable. No choice can be right for all displays; the current choice is a safe one. The bug is in Unix; please send the bug report to K.Thompson and D.Ritchie, twenty years ago. This bug will be fixed in a future OS[1]. -zefram [1] If I ever find the time to write the OS I've been planning, this is one of the things that will be fixed. Character set and printability are a function of the tty.