URL Encoding in ruby

Question

I have a block of code:

temp = "Cancel"
puts CGI::escape(words[1])
puts "\n"
puts CGI::escape(temp)
puts "\n"
puts words[1]
puts "\n"
puts temp
puts "\n"

My output is:

%00C%00a%00n%00c%00e%00l%00

Cancel

Cancel

Cancel

I think it's fair to assume that the issue here is the way I set up my words array. However, I was wondering if this is common behavior which has a solution? If not, what could I be doing wrong that would cause this?

My words array is set up by reading data from a file, then splitting each line and extracting the information I need, so it's nothing too complex.

Could your string be in a 16 bit encoding?

mu is too short
– mu is too short

2012-08-30 23:46:02 +00:00
Commented Aug 30, 2012 at 23:46 — mu is too short
– mu is too short, Commented Aug 30, 2012 at 23:46
@muistooshort, agreed. It has that UTF-16 smell.

the Tin Man
– the Tin Man

2012-08-30 23:57:34 +00:00
Commented Aug 30, 2012 at 23:57 — the Tin Man
– the Tin Man, Commented Aug 30, 2012 at 23:57

drexin · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-30 23:48:21Z

3

You have NUL bytes in your string. puts just ignores them.

1.9.2p290 :016 > puts "Fo\0oooo"
Fooooo
 => nil

with inspect you can see them:

1.9.2p290 :017 > puts "Fo\0oooo".inspect
"Fo\u0000oooo"
 => nil

and here the output of CGI::escape

1.9.2p290 :018 > puts CGI::escape("Fooo\0ooo")
Fooo%00ooo
 => nil

edit:

The quick and dirty solution would be to just remove them:

"Fooooo\0ooo".gsub(/\0/, "")
 => "Foooooooo"

but as you have NUL bytes in front of every char, you should better check your code for reading the file. If you'd provide the code, it would be easier to come up with a solution.

edited Aug 30, 2012 at 23:48

answered Aug 30, 2012 at 23:40

drexin

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3 Comments

the Tin Man Over a year ago

A better solution would be to determine if the file is UTF-16, and then, if so, open it as such prior to reading it.

drexin Over a year ago

I wrote: but as you have NUL bytes in front of every char, you should better check your code for reading the file., that includes checking the encoding, doesn't it?

Olshansky Over a year ago

I tried opening the file as both UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE but both formats cause the following error: ASCII incompatible encoding needs binmode (ArgumentError). Opening as binary obviously wasn't much help so any ideas?

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