Characters aren't displayed correctly

[Philip Semanchuk]

On Mar 2, 2009, at 5:26 PM, John Machin wrote:

> On Mar 3, 3:27 am, Philip Semanchuk <phi... at semanchuk.com> wrote:
>> He claims to have done what I asked him to do in the first place --
>> break the problem into steps and verify the database steps. He says
>> they're working OK. I chose to take him at his word.
>
> Rule number 1: Don't believe anything an OP says that is not
> corroborated by output that looks like it was produced using the repr
> () function (2.x) or ascii() function (3.x)

Saying "I don't believe you" has never worked well for me as a  
conversation opener. Sometimes taking someone at his word is another  
name for giving him enough rope to...make a mistake that he'll remember.

And for many people, trust breeds trust. I trust him, maybe he'll  
trust me when I say (for the second time), "You need to break this  
problem down into discrete, debuggable units."

I (mostly) agree with your rule. But as I said, there's more than one  
way to solve this problem. Or perhaps I should say that there's more  
than one way to lead the OP to a solution to this problem. We teach  
differently, you and I. I believe there's room in the world for *both*  
styles -- perhaps even a third or fourth!  =)


Cheers
Philip