asc("≤") -> {32,8804,32} ?

[ijabbott]

Would it make more sense for the string to character code sequence (and vice versa) functions to deal with unicode character numbers instead of UTF-8 bytes?

Currently:

asc("πi") -> {207, 128, 105} # UTF-8 sequence for U+03C0, U+0069
char({207, 128, 105}) -> "πi"
ord("πi") -> 207 # only the first byte of the UTF-8 sequence for U+03C0
char(207) -> "" # empty string due to partial UTF-8 sequence

('ord' on a non-ASCII character is particularly useless.)

Preferable (IMHO):

asc("πi") -> {960, 105} # UCS sequence U+03C0, U+0069
char({960, 105}) -> "πi"
ord("πi") -> 960 # UCS U+03C0
char(960) -> "π"