Re: Unicode confusables and reordering characters considered harmful, a simple solution

[Gregory Heytings]

> > > Since when is it OK to flag characters that are used very rarely? What 
> > > would be the sense of doing that?  Should we perhaps flag all the 
> > > Egyptian hieroglyphs for the same reason?
> >
> > The answer is above: "given that these controls can have a dangerous 
> > effect".
>
> But they don't.  Not more than just using RTL characters within LTR text 
> would.  Just revisit the example posted by Stefan (which I slightly 
> modified to be more realistic):
>
>      myfun("שָׁלוֹם" ,"السّلامعليكم");
>
> Which string does this function call pass as the first argument, and 
> which as the second one?

There is no danger in that example, and in particular nothing invisible. 
The programmer must just be aware that compilers read source code files in 
byte order, which might be different from the order in which the string is 
displayed on screen, but is identical to the order in which one 
forward-char's through the string.

There is a danger when, because the source code contains invisible control 
characters, the programmer sees something on their screen, and the 
compiler sees something completely different.