Do you have a link to the PR as well?
NobbZ
fireproofsocks
NobbZ
I prefer to read the diffs, I probably won’t even see whats changed, as I’ve gone through that page roughly at 1.0 release time…
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fireproofsocks
The diffs are going to be tough on that one because I essentially rewrote the entire page.
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outlog
the commit is Update binaries-strings-and-char-lists.markdown (#1374) · elixir-lang/elixir-lang.github.com@f7c1cce · GitHub
@fireproofsocks a lot of us are pretty sufficient at reading/skimming diffs aka commits/PRs 
great work on the docs!
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benwilson512
Author of Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe
sasajuric
Author of Elixir In Action
In my mind this is similar to binary vs textual files. A binary file is any sequence of bytes (not bits), whereas a textual file is a special sequence of bytes. Similarly, in Erlang/Elixir, a binary is any sequence of bytes, whereas a string is a special sequence of bytes. I’m quite certain that this terminology is not invented by Erlang. Therefore, I’m not completely convinced by this passage. Perhaps we should summon @rvirding for explanation 
The Erlang term for this is bitstring:
A bitstring is a sequence of zero or more bits, where the number of bits does not need to be divisible by 8. If the number of bits is divisible by 8, the bitstring is also a binary.
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fireproofsocks
ityonemo
If only we adopted gallic sensibility and abolished bytes in favor of octets!! Where I work we’re constantly having to divide by 8 to go from Gbps to GB/s
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Nicd
Nice work! It’s quite thorough and could even help users of other languages understand how Unicode, UTF-8 and binary data works.
Nitpicks:
The
binary-size(n)modifier will matchncharacters in a binary
This should probably read: will match n bytes
so why does Elixir refer to its strings as “binaries”?
This section kind of walks back on the things taught before it. Elixir doesn’t call its strings binaries, strings just happen to be binaries formed in a certain way (i.e. UTF-8 encoded data).
For me the simplest reason binaries are called binaries is that they are blobs of data. Compare to the term BLOB (binary large object) used in e.g. databases, or “binary format” in FTP, or the binary vs text files distinction in many filesystem tools – it’s not a foreign term in this context. It’s untagged data and without knowing what it is beforehand, you cannot use reflection or inspection to determine what it really is. Maybe this doesn’t match what the language authors thought but I don’t see why it should be more complicated than that.
But I digress. Good work on the page.
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