Re: How to convert UInt8 array to NSString

FROM : Jens Alfke
DATE : Wed May 07 04:22:15 2008

On 6 May '08, at 10:45 AM, Aki Inoue wrote:

> Actually, I don't recommend using CP1252 as the generic fallback 
> encoding like this.
> The encoding does have gaps, and the handling of those invalid gaps 
> varies between conversion engines.  CF/NSString treat the invalid 
> bytes strictly and return nil encountering those.


I wasn't aware it had gaps — I've never run into them. Where are they?

> So, our recommendation now is to try UTF-8 first; then, try some 
> other encoding deduced from the context (user's localization, 
> intended source/destination of the data, etc).  If all failed, 
> should try MacRoman as the ultimate fallback (the encoding has no 
> gap so never fails).


In the contexts I've been dealing with — data fetched over HTTP from 
random websites — there hasn't been anything deducible from the 
context (assuming the HTTP Content-Type already failed.) In that 
situation MacRoman is not at all a good fallback as almost no Web 
content uses it; CP-1252 or ISO-Latin-1 are the most likely fallbacks 
after UTF-8.

—Jens