CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyencodingencode
user3236907
user3236907

Reputation: 37

Ruby internal and external encoding

I have gone through various material and unable to find the difference between default internal encoding and external encoding in ruby. Can anyone help me in this regard.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 412

Answers (1)

Holger Just
Holger Just

Reputation: 55748

When reading strings from external sources (such as files, network sockets, ...) Ruby may assume that this data is encoded in a specific string encoding. This is the external encoding. For example, if you are reading text files and known that they are encoded in UTF-8, you may set the external encoding to UTF-8 to hint to Ruby that the data is supposed to be UTF-8 encododed.

Now, when reading the data, Ruby can also convert the data to a different encoding which might be more useful for use with your program. For example, if you are assembling data from different sources such as files you read and an HTTP request, it's often useful if you can make sure that your string all have the same encoding regardless of their source.

For this, you can set the internal encoding. If you set the correct external encoding for your data source and e.g. your internal encoding to UTF-8, you can be fairly sure that all your strings (regardless of where they come from) are correctly UTF-8 encoded Strings and can be manipulated, merged and changed at will without worrying about encoding issues deep in your business logic.

Upvotes: 1

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