On May 30, 2006, at 5:25 PM, James Holderness wrote:
I agree completely, but as a content consumer I still need to know whether to use IRI::Compare or String::Compare when I do encounter some ridiculous feed that uses example (a). I'm hoping for a simple answer along the lines of "Use IRI:Compare", "Use String::Compare", or "The spec doesn't say, so you may use whatever you prefer".
Both are perfectly legal. IRI::Compare will avoid some false negatives at the cost of burning some CPU cycles. Postel's law would suggest using IRI::Compare initially, but if a profiler revealed it to be a performance bottleneck, I'd nuke it in favor of strcmp() without a second's hesitation. I actually wouldn't be surprised if that happened; case-insensitivity and Unicode sit poorly together and are a notorious source of performance sinkholes. -Tim
