How Pliro stores text files
A source file stores your program’s letters and symbols as bytes. A text encoding is the agreement for turning those bytes back into text. Pliro uses UTF-8. You can type ordinary text and emoji; the editor handles the conversion when saving.
What is UTF-8?
UTF-8 uses one to four bytes for a Unicode code point. A takes one byte and 🐢 takes four. A code point is a numbered element of text; several can sometimes make one visible character. Pliro’s length counts code points, not file bytes. The UTF-8 article has a table and a program to try.
New lines and positions
Pliro accepts LF, CRLF, and legacy CR line endings. These are different stored control characters for the boundary between lines. CRLF counts as one new line. Line endings explains the abbreviations.
Line and column numbers shown to people start at one. Columns count Unicode code points. Invalid UTF-8 produces a lexical error: Pliro cannot read part of the source as valid text.
Save source as UTF-8 without BOM. A BOM is an extra, invisible label that some editors add before your text. It is not a line of Pliro code. Pliro currently rejects this label. Choose the editor’s “UTF-8 without BOM” saving option; the BOM explanation shows the steps. A non-empty file does not need a final newline, although the formatter adds one.