bug#9653: 24.0.50; `ucs-names' - Why all of the ("" . XXX) entries?

[Stefan Monnier]

>> I'll repeat that when one want to know what Unicode says about the
>> name of a character, the answer is "", not "<Unnamed>".
> Correct.

Doesn't matter.  The point is that it's easier to turn nil into
something else (e.g. "") than to turn "" into something else (e.g. nil).

>> I'm not sure because there are multiple use-cases of
>> get-char-code-property, and nil is better only in some of them.
>> But, it's just "I'm not sure".  If you are sure, as I wrote above,
>> I'll change it back.

I'm sure.

> what-cursor-position etc., where we will now need to display an empty
> string when we get nil.

Big deal: that's just an (or ... "").

And in any case no matter what the standard says, I'm pretty sure end
users would prefer to be told explicitly that a char doesn't have a name
rather than to see an empty field and wonder what that means.



        Stefan