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Because in the decades that UTF-8 is available you're the second person to need the feature.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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Probably the first. The other guy on the team hadn't noticed the issue.
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Adding, there's another issue.
What if your intent was to embed control characters into UTF-8?
.NET cannot do this for you without breaking the UTF-8 spec.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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For instance?
honey the codewitch wrote: .NET cannot do this for you
Bet it can. 
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Yeah Microsoft could break UTF8 to make you happy and make everyone else mad.
And make .NET broken.
I'll get back to you when someone besides you thinks this is a good idea.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
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But seriously, what are you saying it can't do?
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I'm saying they can't recursively decode UTF-8 without breaking the spec.
Edit: I feel like I'm peeing in your Wheaties, but that's not my intent. I'm just saying it's not .NET's place to satisfy your requirement. You could write a Nuget package for it, but it's completely non-standard behavior and would break the spec + potentially break other code.
Check out my IoT graphics library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/gfx
And my IoT UI/User Experience library here:
https://honeythecodewitch.com/uix
modified 19-Jun-24 5:38am.
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honey the codewitch wrote: they can't recursively decode UTF-8 without breaking the spec.
I don't see how you arrive at that conclusion.
honey the codewitch wrote: not .NET's place to satisfy your requirement
I agree.
honey the codewitch wrote: would break the spec
In what way exactly? Particularly if the caller has control over whether or not it does.
But you mentioned something about writing control characters in UTF-8 -- which include carriage-return, line-feed, form-feed, etc. -- so I don't understand what you meant that it would break UTF-8.
Whatever situation you are trying to communicate, I am sure .net can do it already, and it doesn't "break UTF-8".
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My career seems to be entirely described by the following:
"Use a simple technology to do a thing that 80% of Devs take for granted and who also tell you it works, but discovering that the thing doesn't actually work the way they say it works."
Here's the latest. I will try to keep it short (because I'm going to write an article on it, but I can't wait to share this one because it is so weird (from multiple angles)).
1) JavaScript FormData Posted To Backend Is All Strings
Mabye a lot of you know this, but all of the values in the following (real) example end up being strings when they get to the backend.
var formData = new FormData();
formData.append("uuid",currentUuid);
var entryId = 9;
var jentry = {
Id:entryId,
Title: titleText,
Note: noteText,
Created: createdDate,
Updated: null
};
for (var key in jentry) {
formData.append(key, jentry[key]);
}Odd, But Acceptable
Ok, so the point of that is that all of the values in the jentry object are converted to string values. That means Updated = "null" (string) and the Id = "9".
This is odd, to me, but acceptable.
If you refute this, please provide citations. I've searched far & wide and asked Copilot -- all says they are strings when they hit the backend.
Now It Gets Real Weird
My WebAPI method which gets called by the JS Fetch with the previously shown FormData looks like:
public ActionResult Save([FromForm] String uuid,[FromForm] JournalEntry jentry)
AutoBinding In .NET Core Works With JS Fetch
1. The JS Fetch works.
2. The C# JournalEntry is created from the data posted via the FormData variables.
3. I can examine the data in the C# JournalEntry object and (almost) everything looks fine.
Autobinding Ignores The Id Value!
However, at some point I needed the Id value which was being passed in.
But I noticed that the Id value in the C# object was always ZERO Id = 0.
FormData Value Is Non-Zero, But Autobound Object Is 0
But, keep in mind that the FormData object shown above is passing in a non-zero value for Id (9 in the example.
What!?!
Why Is This Happening?
The only thing I could guess is that since the Id value (from the FormData) was being passed as a String that the autobinding just ignores the value and sets it to 0.
Here's How My C# Object (Used for Autobinding) Is Defined
public class JournalEntry{
public Int64 Id{get;set;}
public String? Title{get;set;}
public String Note{get;set;}
public String Created{get;set;}
public String? Updated{get;set;}
}
Yes, the point is that the Id is an Int64 (not a string).
This Part Should Alarm You!!! This Should Be The Bug
So, somehow the autobinder is able to bind the JournalEntry to the FormData object but it just ignores the Id value and sets it to 0!!!!
Why?? !! Please someone explain it to me.
A "Workaround" Test
I altered my JournalEntry class so the Id is a String
public class JournalEntry{
public String Id{get;set;}
and posted the data again.
Autobinder Works! What?!
After that change, the autobinder sets the Id value properly (non-zero value that is read from FormData).
Not What I Expected
This is not what I expected. JSON data is _supposed_ to get autobound to the C# object, right?
Just Binds the Parts It Wants To Bind?
It's weird because it doesn't fail to bind it just skips parts of the object that it wants to skip.
I could accept it if it failed to bind because it was the wrong type.
Article Is Coming Later Today
This was long but I will be writing it up in an article with associated examples and an example project you'll be able to download and try for yourself.
modified 17-Jun-24 8:08am.
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Automatism is often also random.
Either you declare what absolutely has to be bound or you have to live with chance.
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0x01AA wrote: Automatism is often also random.
That's quite true.
We often interact with behavior that is basically _undefined_.
Undefined behavior could result in anything.
So, I guess software development is just a form of "trial and error". Just see what you get.
This is why it is illegal in many areas to call it software engineering. 
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Quote:
formData.append(uuid,{"uuid":currentUuid});
I'm assuming that's a typo in your question. If not, you're sending a value with the name set to whatever's in your uuid variable, and the value set to the literal string "[object Object]".
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Thanks for pointing that out. 
That was a typo / bad test from one of the numerous examples I was trying to get it to work.
I updated my original post to fix it to the correct value for uuid I was sending through:
formData.append("uuid",currentUuid);
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Gonna guess this is the "(almost)". Heh.
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Over a decade ago, I wrote a SQL Server backup/rotation manager. Backups are zipped and password protected using IonicZip, then copied to a local repository on another disk, and optionally pushed out to an FTP resource. This is handy for when I find myself working on the laptop away from the home/office. This system has been used on multiple servers without issues.
A couple of weeks ago, I started using it on a newish Azure VM for one of our latest projects to manage 2 customer databases. It appeared to be working fine...backups/zips/copies all getting created with no errors...or so I thought. Yesterday, I was away from the office and decided to grab the previous day's backups and restore them on my laptop. Using 7-zip, the zips extracted, but with a CRC error detected.  Of course, the backups were useless. Native windows zip refused to extract anything, failing with a generic error message. 'unrecognized error'.  Every backup from that system was corrupted! 
Backups from the other 2 systems are/were fine...one of the other systems is also an Azure VM with practically identical setups and has been working fine for years.
I'll skip the troubleshooting details and get to the fix. IonicZip has a property that I had never heard of before, and which until now had not been important: ParallelDeflateThreshold which needed to be set to -1. Doing so fixed the problem. If I understand correctly, IonicZip has a known problem with files that compress to < 4MB. In my case, mine were slightly over 2MB compressed. All of my other backups are much larger which is perhaps the reason why I've never seen this problem before.
At any rate, I wanted to post this here in case someone else here is using this component and not aware of this issue. The bottom line is, test your backups!  Have a great weekend! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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So, just how long were you "puckered"?
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
I’m begging you for the benefit of everyone, don’t be STUPID.
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MarkTJohnson wrote: how long were you "puckered"?
I would have been puckered if I had truly needed those backups. As it was, I went through a few emotions:
0: Surprise! Your false sense of security has just been shattered...You are not as clever as you thought you were, and your backups are shite!
1: Doubt...Hmmm what about the other 20 daily backups? Are they all shite?
2: Relief...Whew! The other backups are fine. Just these two from this server are crap.
3: Annoyance. I just want to get on with work. Now I have to log on Azure, allow myself to RDP into that box, get raw unzipped backups, and start troubleshooting the problem.
4: Sleuth Mode...the problem seems to be with the zip lib...maybe a bug...maybe fixed? Go get the latest version to find that it's being deprecated, and the last version is 6 y/o. Whatever, I'll try it.
5: Disappointment.  Nope that didn't work, time to open the project and debug with one of the dbs having the issues.
6: Excitement.  Yay! I was able to replicate the issue...now on to understanding.
7: Discovery: A well-phrased search put me on the right track...a known issue with an easy fix.
8: Humility: I'm sure I would have discovered this eventually, but I put a lot of faith in an automated process without actually verifying the outputs, which was the only way to detect the problem. Lesson learned!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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... it occurred to me: What if CP itself, or any subsystem employed, has chosen to use the top 8 bits e.g. to flag privileges or other user properties, leaving only 24 bits for the member number?
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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If anyone did it, they did it unsigned!
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This would be very poor database design. If this is actually the case, Chris should demand a refund from the database designer.
In any case, the change in schema should be quite simple, and, assuming that the user ID and privileges are accessed by two separate methods, the change in the interface code should also be small.
For that matter, encoding the various privileges in an integer is also problematic. What happens when the number of privileges grows (as it inevitably will), and exceeds 32?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I agree. Giving a single field/value multiple meanings and uses has always led to trouble down the road for me.
There are no solutions, only trade-offs. - Thomas Sowell
A day can really slip by when you're deliberately avoiding what you're supposed to do.
- Calvin (Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes)
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Yet it is certainly not uncommon. I guess the most common use is to let the MSB indicate whether the remaining bits is an error code or a valid index. This is frequently used as function return values: A non-negative values is a valid function result, a negative value is an error code.
My gut feeling is that this is more common with functions defined 10 or 20 years ago than with functions defined this year. But lots of old libraries are still used. Also, coding habits die slowly.
I think there is a dividing line between "Giving a single field/value multiple meanings and uses" and "storing multiple distinct fields in a word in order to save space". The compiler can give full support for it, so that the fields addressed by distinct names, are of distinct types and have no overlap. They may be declared e.g. as a byte and as a 24-bit unsigned value. Maybe the original code designers never ever would dream of 16 million not being enough for everyone. Like those who set off a 32 bit value to represent the number of seconds since 01-01-1970 00:00:00. (There is no principal difference between an unplanned 24 bit value overflow and an unplanned 32 bit overflow.)
You may argue that a programmer should always make ample headroom for all values. I have seen programmers doing that, using 64 bit values everywhere, without ever thinking. Non-thinking programmers are no good. Around Y2K there also arose a "2038 panic", and I saw programmers argue in dead earnest that now that we are approaching a 32 bit overflow, to make sure that it doesn't happen again, we should not expand the value to 64 bits but to 128 bits.
I guess that most readers are familiar with the quote from a Xerox Fortran manual, using a DATA statement to give the value of pi as 3.141592653589793, with the additional remark. "This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change". While that statement is most certainly true, the situation is not very likely to happen.
Making common sense assumptions makes sense even in programming. And even if common sense fails a rare occasions. I could mention quite a few examples of lists of persons, names or IDs where I would never consider the situation that e.g. a database system with a maximum of 16 Mi tuples would have insufficient capacity.
I would be curious to know how may of the 15.9 million CP members have been giving one or more contributions to the form the last 12 months, writing anything anywhere on the site, and who is still a member (not counting spammers who are thrown out). I suspect that the count would suggest that a 24 bit number should be enough for everybody.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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trønderen wrote: I suspect that the count would suggest that a 24-bit number should be enough for everybody.
The way that user IDs are allocated seems to indicate that they are defined as an "auto-incremented" integer. This means that user IDs are never reused. So, while there are less than 16M users on the site, the user ID values will grow without bound.
I expect that message IDs are allocated in a similar way (presumably with a 64-bit ID).
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Daniel Pfeffer wrote: The way that user IDs are allocated seems to indicate that they are defined as an "auto-incremented" integer. This means that user IDs are never reused.
Oh, sure. But if there never are more than, say, 200 active users, it seems a little overkill to use a 64 bit member user ID for the purpose of preventing overflow. Similar to increasing the variable holding the second count since 01011970 to an 128 bit value "to be on the safe side". That is a "... should the value of pi change" kind of rationale.
To make one thing very clear: There is nothing wrong about 64 bit values - certainly not if you have got unlimited space and unlimited processing capacity available, and most certainly not for one 64 bit value. If the cost of using 64 bit values is zero or practically zero, then you may of course use 64 bit, even to store bools. Then you can simply ignore space considerations. You need to care for space requirements only if you do not have unlimited space.
Whenever a (hard or soft) limit is broken is a time to sit down to consider, whether an 8-bit, 16-bit, 32-bit or some other limit. Don't forget that 64 bits is not 32 bits more than 32 bits, it is 11 orders of magnitude more! 32 bits is 5 orders of magnitude more than 16 bits, not 16 bits more. "A billion here, a billion there - you know, pretty soon it grows into real money" ... Whether he actually phrased it that way or not (never trust quotes to be exact!), the message is clear: Keep the magnitudes straight. When someone states something like "It was either millions or billions, I am not sure", you shake your head, even though that is only three orders of magnitude. So shouldn't raising the upper limit by five, or even eleven orders of magnitude be handled as something rather significant?
Raymond Chen's last blog entry, posted yesterday, addresses 8 bit counters: Why does GlobalLock max out at 255 locks?[^]. Note his final paragraph: "This hasn’t caused any problems for 30 years, so I think we dodged a bullet there."
(And for those unfamiliar with "The New Old Thing": That is among the most readworthy, and enjoyable, IT blogs in the entire internet. Bookmark it!)
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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trønderen wrote: But if there never are more than, say, 200 active users, it seems a little overkill to use a 64 bit member user ID for the purpose of preventing overflow.
I agree with you regarding appropriate choice of value sizes.
The number of users is unlikely to exceed 232 (4 billion - half the population of the planet!), so I agree than a 32-bit autoincremented value is sufficient for that. However, the number of messages has likely already exceeded 232 - this would require that the average number of messages per user be only 256.
trønderen wrote: "The New Old Thing": That is among the most readworthy, and enjoyable, IT blogs in the entire internet.
Agreed. I've learnt quite a bit, both about Windows internals and about general programming from this blog.
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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