From: Linus Torvalds Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2008 17:32:11 GMT Subject: Re: git on MacOSX and files with decomposed utf-8 file names Message-ID: In-Reply-To: <98F90EB6-1930-4643-8C6C-CA11CB123BAA@sb.org> On Wed, 23 Jan 2008, Kevin Ballard wrote: > > Well yes, any context in which a string is treated as Unicode instead of an > opaque sequence of bytes will probably lead to normalization at some point > (e.g. when searching text, I'm going to want Märchen and Märchen to be treated > as the same string). As pointed out (multiple times), this is only true if the programmer is a moron. You do not need to - and *should* not - convert to a common normalization in order to compare to Uncode strings. You should just compare them with a Unicode-aware comparison routine. It will be faster, and it will avoid corrupting the input. Sadly, stupid people are much too common. Linus