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I couldn't debug the code because of my name

mikolaj-kaminski.com

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Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#201

Post by SergeAx »

When I first installed Windows 7 like ten years ago, I entered my Russian name in Cyrillic. When I saw that the system created a directory with exactly that name under `C:\Users\` I immediately scanned the internet for a way to rename it and done just that. I don't want to know how much mess like that in a story I thus had successfully escaped.

NB: the method is still the same, it's a second (not accepted) answer here: https://superuser.com/questions/890812/how-to-rename-the-use... (about ProfileImagePath registry value).

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#202

Post by deathanatos »

xdfgh1112 wrote: post #7
simonblack wrote: post #4

Isn't this one of those "100 things Programmers don't know about People's Names" things? Like the poor, it will be with us always.

I don't know, it's just a Unicode character? Not even a newer one, it's just 2 utf8 bytes. Pretty much everything should support that in 2021. When I think of 100 things I think of stuff like "some people spell their name in all lowercase and get really funny if you change it"

> Pretty much everything should support that in 2021.

Yes, like IPv6.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#203

Post by godmode2019 »

I have a set of names I give to different providers. Advertisers always assume a name is constant and email addresses can change.

I got a name saying 'Hi John I just want to xyz'

I can skip this email as they used a fake name. Works better than other methods I have found.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#204

Post by deathanatos »

hprotagonist wrote: post #71
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the default windows encoding is UTF-16, a long time ago it was Windows-1252 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252

or CP-1251, in some locations.

There are a good number of them, all depending on locale.

In this case, I'd guess CP-1250, since 0xb3, from the error, decodes to "ł", from the name, in that encoding. (But not in CP-1251, or '52.)

if you want to see how to arrive there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28939960

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#205

Post by deathanatos »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #48
hprotagonist wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

windows probably defaults to latin-1

the default windows encoding is UTF-16, a long time ago it was Windows-1252 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows-1252

Given the frequency with which Windows-12* mojibake occurs, people are either a number of holdouts still using Windows 98 SE, or there are a good number of paths in Windows that still use the non-Unicode encodings.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#207

Post by scollet »

devrand wrote: post #49
sschueller wrote: post #31

Many years ago I could not access the apple developer panel because of the umlaut in my last name. It was eventually fixed but I was quite surprised that such a large company would run into such a basic issue.

My last name has an apostrophe in it which Apple apparently loves to embed directly into their JavaScript unescaped. For a long time neither I nor Apple could look up AppleCare status on my stuff as they were all linked to my Apple ID. The portal would thus require me to login, but then would just show a partially rendered page as my last name was causing an JS syntax error.

A Kafkaesque situation of no escape...

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#208

Post by stubish »

vultour wrote: post #128
Dannymetconan wrote: post #117

I can very much relate to this but also have very little sympathy here. I have a special character in my name, an apostrophe, and it causes trouble regularly online and with tooling. A number of years ago I decided just to never use it when it came to anything to do with technical work be it email, logins or usernames. Unicode characters are a pain to deal with and I have suffered from it first hand trying to handle…

I'm really surprised someone technically minded thought it's a good idea to put a non ASCII character in their username. I'd never do that.

ASCII only is not appropriate in some locales, as the keyboards don't have a-z. This is why in Thailand people tend to use their mobile phone number as their password, because it can be typed on all the common keyboard layouts they will encounter.

Also, with Windows 10 users will often not even choose their username. It gets generated from their given name + surname (which is a whole different issue for people without one or t'other).

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#209

Post by lmm »

web007 wrote: post #172
nullspace wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the best course of action would be to change my name As someone who has been told this, for other reasons, I empathize. My reaction has always been - "Your system can't even handle names, you need to fix it". Edit: I wish there was a library / service that helped you handle all sorts of edge cases in names, so that you don' t have to worry about it. Just use a user-id, and set / get a name from a lib / service that…

I believe that library / service is called UTF-8. These days everything should be stored as bare UTF-8 data (or utf8mb4 if you're MySQL) and presented without anything else. Don't parse it, don't slice-and-dice it, don't prepend or append titles or honorifics or suffixes, don't make assumptions about length or content beyond "must be > 0 as a whole" and DEFINITELY don't use it as an identifier. Treat it as a non-uniq…

Not good enough, thanks to Han unification - if you do that you'll mangle Japanese names.

Re: I couldn't debug the code because of my name

#210

Post by zamalek »

dmingod666 wrote: post #56
zamalek wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you use a Microsoft account to set up windows then you have no control over the local username.

That sucks.. always hated the idea of an online account to access your local system..

I'm not saying it's a good idea (even though I stupidly do it), I'm merely pointing out that there are reasons that U0080+ may end up in a username; for reasons other than intentionally putting it in there.

As for the benefits, which is completely off-topic, Windows Store is actually pretty awesome if you completely avoid search (and you need to do the Microsoft account thing for it AFAIK). Windows has needed a system to update 3rd-party software, to compete with Linux package managers, and the store is a really good effort (there are still annoying warts that Aur, Deb, RPM do not have). If you're willing to be a bit dumb, there is convenience.

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