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Re: st: Failure to detect strings that look completely identical
From
Ronan Conroy <[email protected]>
To
"[email protected]" <[email protected]>
Subject
Re: st: Failure to detect strings that look completely identical
Date
Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:01:26 +0000
On 2011 Samh 22, at 19:50, Nick Cox wrote:
> The help for -charlist- (SSC) documents that char(32) and char(160)
> are hard to tell apart:
>
> . di "|`=char(32)'|"
> | |
>
> . di "|`=char(160)'|"
> | |
>
> So, watch out for char(160).
Your mileage may vary
Mac OS X
. di "|`=char(160)'|"
|†|
. di "|`=char(32)'|"
| |
I got caught out, years ago, by data contaminated by ASCII 30 - the infamous null character. It was used by MS Word to indicate end of file, and could sneak into data.
. di "|`=char(30)'|"
| |
However, if I paste this output into BBEdit and view invisibles, I can see the little horror, which BBEdit displays as a red ¿. (If your mailer hasn't shown you a Spanish inverted question mark, well, that's mailers for you.)
. di "|`=char(30)'|"
|¿ |
Null is particularly nasty because it has no width, so it's very hard to spot.
Ronán Conroy
[email protected]
Associate Professor
Division of Population Health Sciences
Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland
Beaux Lane House
Dublin 2
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