On Mon, Jun 22, 2010 at 7:27:31 PM, Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote: > On 2010年6月22日 08:03:58 am Nick Coghlan wrote: >> So, to boil down the ebytes idea, it is basically a request for a >> second string type that holds an octet stream plus an encoding name, >> rather than a Unicode character stream. >> Do any other languages have any equivalent to this ebtyes type? Ruby seems to do this: http://yokolet.blogspot.com/2009/07/design-and-implementation-of-ruby-m17n.html I don't use ruby myself, and I'm probably missing some subtle flaws, but the exposition at that link makes sense to me. cheers, Jess