4 ms·
And worse, the ‘operators’ are postfix or infix, so if you're handling text sequentially — and let's say, split across network packets with an arbitrary delay i
by kps 7y ago
And worse, the ‘operators’ are postfix or infix, so if you're handling text sequentially — and let's say, split across network packets with an arbitrary delay in between — you can't even tell you've read a complete character until you receive the next one.
Typing in many Latin languages generates diacritics using ‘dead keys’, which are prefix operators. (Originally, on a physical typewriter, these were keys that simply struck the paper without triggering the mechanism to advance the carriage.) If Unicode had taken this hint, life would be easier.
(ISO/IEC 6937 had prefix diacritics, but it was too late.)
- tialaramex 7y agoComplete recognition before processing. It's not the law, just a good idea, but you should do it anyway. In cryptography this lesson had to keep being learned. "Oh, I received this partial data, and I processed it, and then in the next packet I received the MAC and I realised the bad guys altered the data, oops" Process whole strings, the meaning of a partial string may not be what you hope, even without fancy writing systems and Unicode encoding. "Give the money to Steph" - OK, will do "...enson" - Crap, OK, somebody chase Steph and get our money back, meanwhile here's James Stephenson's money "... once he gives you the key" - Aargh. Somebody chase down James and get the key off him.
- lanstin 7y agoWow so interesting an idea. But so many streaming algorithms etc. people stick megabytes of crap into one framed message.