Language change proposal

[Eric Merritt]

> (There's also a portability issue: there are still
> EBCDIC machines 
> around that don't support Unicode. I don't think
> this is relevant for 
> Erlang though *g*)

 EBCDIC is far, far from dead. Its usually only used
on big iron like a 390 but its still used in the
midrange realm on the as400s too. I wouldn't mind 
seeing erlang for 400s or 390s. Then you have some of
the most reliable code running on some of the most
reliable hardware on the planet.
 
And no, this hardware is not old. Both of these
platforms still see quite allot of use. IBM still
releases upgrades and creates new versions. In fact,
right now, the as/400 is probably the best general
midrange server product available. I would say the
same  about the 390 on the high end.

 In any case, allot of systems still use EBCDIC.

> My personal idea about Unicode is that it is
> massively overengineered 
> for simple tasks like representing source code.
> With one exception: it would be very nice if the
> language allowed 
> Unicode within string literals. That's more a
> question of how to 
> integrate binary data into source code well.

 I tend to agree. Why introduce complexity where none
is needed. ASCII is probably the simplist solution
that works, why switch it for something much more
complex.
 


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