[erlang-questions] correct terminology for referring to strings

[Jeff Schultz]

On Fri, Aug 03, 2012 at 10:19:43AM +1200, Richard O'Keefe wrote:
> m% cat snark.erl
> -module(snark).
> -export([f/0]).
> f() -> [ '', '', '', '', '', '', '', '' ].
> 
> but in my text editor,
> 
> f() -> [ '^@', '^A', '^B', '^C', '^D', '^E', '^F', '^G' ].
> 
> It would probably be a Good Thing if Erlang gave at least a warning
> about control characters in atom, string, or character literals
> written without using \ .

Could we just disallow control characters altogether?  Or at least
require an option to enable them.  Please.  They're just accidents
waiting to happen when UTF-8 is eventually implemented and serve no
useful purpose that I can see.


    Jeff Schultz