Series
Language
How computers wrangle language, human and otherwise -- text and encodings, parsing, compilers and interpreters, spell check, search, and diff. Part of Under the Hood.
How Text Actually Works
Open a file and your editor shows you words. The disk only ever held bytes, and everything in between is interpretation: a chain of agreements about what the numbers mean. This post walks that chain, from ASCII's seven bits through the code-page chaos to Unicode and UTF-8, and then into the bugs the chain produces: why "é" can be two different strings, why string length is a lie, why uppercase depends on where you live, and why sorting text is a treaty rather than an algorithm.
Coming soon