What does #encoding BINARY mean in the Ruby code?

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There is a line #encoding BINARY in the beginning of the code, what does it mean?

Sergio Tulentsev · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-30 13:55:17Z

3

http://ruby.runpaint.org/encoding

Ruby defines an encoding named ASCII-8BIT, with an alias of BINARY, which does not correspond to any known encoding. It is intended to be associated with binary data, such as the bytes that make up a PNG image, so has no restrictions on content. One byte always corresponds with one character. This allows a String, for instance, to be treated as bag of bytes rather than a sequence of characters. ASCII-8BIT, then, effectively corresponds to the absence of an encoding, so methods that expect an encoding name recognise nil as a synonym.

answered Dec 30, 2011 at 13:55

Sergio Tulentsev

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the Tin Man · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-30 17:24:46Z

0

That line is how we tell the Ruby interpreter to expect a certain character set in the source file.

James Grey has a great series on dealing with character encodings in Ruby. In particular, "Ruby 1.9's Three Default Encodings " might be good reading if you want to understand the details.

answered Dec 30, 2011 at 17:24

the Tin Man

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