# Ruby and unicode **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [May 24, 2006, 8:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214 "2006-05-24T20:05:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 8:05pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214/1 "2006-05-24T20:05:34Z")
Does Ruby support unicode? If not it’s a disappointment. ---
**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 8:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214/2 "2006-05-24T20:19:36Z")
Well, there are extension libraries for handling unicodes. It is also expected that Ruby 2.0 will bring more complete I18N supports. What are your needs? daesan On May 25, 2006, at 3:05 AM, Pål Bergström wrote: > Does Ruby support unicode? If not it’s a disappointment. > > – > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). Dae San H. removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 9:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214/3 "2006-05-24T21:19:54Z")
Dae San H. wrote: > Well, there are extension libraries for handling unicodes. It is > also expected that Ruby 2.0 will bring more complete I18N supports. > > What are your needs? > > daesan > > On May 25, 2006, at 3:05 AM, PÃ¥l Bergström wrote: > > > Does Ruby support unicode? If not it’s a disappointment. > > > > – > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). > > Dae San H. > removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid Just to be able to work smoothly from source to browser in Swedish without problems, the beauty of unicode. As I can understand it works like php, where certain methods like string lengths can give problems, but besides that it just passes it through. Is this correct? ---
**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 10:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214/4 "2006-05-24T22:39:18Z")
On 5/24/06, Pål Bergström [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Just to be able to work smoothly from source to browser in Swedish > without problems, the beauty of unicode. Pål, you don’t have to use unicode to work in swedish. ISO-8859-1 will be sufficient to get accented characters including åäö. ISO-8859-1 is handled by Ruby without any problems. If your are working in Rails, please see the swedish Rails user group wiki for details: [http://rails.se/rails/show/Railstips+för+svenska+applikationer](http://rails.se/rails/show/Railstips+f%C3%B6r+svenska+applikationer) Regards, Peter ---
**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 6:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214/5 "2006-05-26T18:40:19Z")
On 24.5.2006, at 23:02, Dae San H. wrote: > If you need methods that properly manipulate UTF8 strings, install > unicode gem and install unicode hacks from http:// > [julik.textdriven.com/svn/tools/rails\_plugins/unicode\_hacks/](http://julik.textdriven.com/svn/tools/rails_plugins/unicode_hacks/) > > Unicode hacks replaces String methods with UTF8 aware versions. You should not advise the use of unicode hacks plugin, since it will very probably break any Rails application. See for example [http://www.fngtps.com/2006/01/encoding-in-rails](http://www.fngtps.com/2006/01/encoding-in-rails) and [http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/unicodeLibForRuby18.html](http://redhanded.hobix.com/inspect/unicodeLibForRuby18.html)… Regards, izidor ---
**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\ **Post date:** [May 26, 2006, 9:08pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214/6 "2006-05-26T21:08:04Z")
Right, that is because Rails depend on many of String methods that unicode\_hacks replaces. However, you can just rename the method names in unicode\_hacks. I just add ‘u\_’ prefix to all the methods in unicode\_hacks. Cheers, Daesan On May 27, 2006, at 1:38 AM, Izidor J. wrote: > You should not advise the use of unicode hacks plugin, since it Dae San H. removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/a5b964/32.png) [@paulbutcher](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/paulbutcher)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2006, 11:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-and-unicode/95214/7 "2006-05-24T23:04:14Z")
Yes, strings in UTF8 (or any character set for that matter) simply pass through since they are just byte sequence. If you need methods that properly manipulate UTF8 strings, install unicode gem and install unicode hacks from http:// [julik.textdriven.com/svn/tools/rails\_plugins/unicode\_hacks/](http://julik.textdriven.com/svn/tools/rails_plugins/unicode_hacks/) Unicode hacks replaces String methods with UTF8 aware versions. You would also need to put following code snippet in config/ environment.rb: $KCODE = ‘u’ [Peak Obsession](http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/HowToUseUnicodeStrings) is a good resource for unicode usage on rails. daesan On May 25, 2006, at 4:20 AM, PÃ¥l Bergström wrote: > Just to be able to work smoothly from source to browser in Swedish > without problems, the beauty of unicode. As I can understand it works > like php, where certain methods like string lengths can give problems, > but besides that it just passes it through. Is this correct? Dae San H. removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid