View source for Talk:Reverse a string

==Extra Credit?==
Does any example go for the extra credit Unicode combining characters? It seems to have been introduced [[http://rosettacode.org/mw/index.php?title=Reversing_a_string&oldid=22893 here]] by Kevin Reid, but I am not sure that even his [[http://rosettacode.org/mw/index.php?title=Reversing_a_string&oldid=36231#E E example]] goes for the extra credit. --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] 04:35, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

:Nobody's tackled it since the requirement was introduced. It's moderately tricky too IIRC, as it gets into the whole problem of normalization of strings. —[[User:Dkf|Donal Fellows]] 08:07, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

::I've cooked up something that works for the given Unicode string in Python and I have tried to make it generic, but the more I read about Unicode, the more I know I don't know :-) &nbsp; &nbsp; --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] 08:30, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

I have found the [http://www.unicode.org/Public/5.2.0/ucd/Index-5.2.0d2.txt data table], ([http://www.unicode.org/copyright.html#Exhibit1 license]),  that is embedded in the Python module on-line. Should I split the task and have the stretch goal as a task on its own? (parse the table if needed, reverse a unicode string using the info from the table/an internal function with the combining info). --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] 09:20, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

About my addition: Yep, it's often tricky, and that's why I said "extra credit". The thing is, if you ''don't'' do it, you get nonsense from certain Unicode strings; this will become increasingly relevant as the world drifts away from the habits of ASCII-and-a-few-extras. So I added this to spread a little Unicode-handling-awareness (though this isn't even complete: there are also e.g. bidirectional formatting markers, which need even more complicated handling). And that's why I think it shouldn't be a separate task: it's not a ''different problem'', it's ''more correctness'' (unless the string you're reversing is not really text, in which case you're looking for [[Binary_string_manipulation_functions|binary]] tasks). --[[User:Kevin Reid|Kevin Reid]] 12:03, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

:I am so relieved ''not'' to have to delve any further into Unicode. Whilst doing my background reading, I could not help but think that the margins were littered with little arrows and in much smaller text <small>Here be Dragons</small>. :-) &nbsp; --[[User:Paddy3118|Paddy3118]] 16:35, 28 July 2009 (UTC)

:What unicode characters should be handled?  For example in ShinTakez' resolution of the issue in R it was assumed that the unicode character meant was not either of the specials, U+FFFC or U+FFFD; is that a reasonable assumption? -[[User:Russell|Russell Pierce]] 18:50, 28 July 2009 (UTC)