literals for invalid characters?

[stevengj]

This seems weird:

julia> "\x94"[1]
'\x94': Malformed UTF-8 (category Ma: Malformed, bad data)

julia> '\x94'
ERROR: syntax: invalid empty character literal

Shouldn't you be able to enter '\x...' for such characters, so that the literal format matches the repr?

cc @StefanKarpinski, who designed Char in #24999.

[simeonschaub]

Duplicate of #25072?

[stevengj]

Thanks!

[stevengj]

Actually, it's not quite the same. That issue is about overlong Char, which a bit different from '\x94' (a Char representing a single byte of invalid UTF-8).

[simeonschaub]

Yeah, maybe we can keep both open, but it seems to be the same underlying issue

[StefanKarpinski]

I did mention later in that issue supporting straight up invalid character literals. Jeff had some tips on where to start hacking it into the parser but I never got around to it. This would be nice to have.

[stevengj]

Fair enough, we can close this one.