[Openmcl-devel] implications of setting *default-file-character-encoding* to :utf-8

[R.Stoye]

Hi,

i use to set *default-file-character-encoding* to :utf-8 since it is  
easier when dealing with a lot of files containing german umlaut  
characters.
But i have had some small problems with that aproach using Hunchentoot  
and file uploads:

The library rfc2388 uses faithful I/O  (http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/io.html#faith 
) which fails under this conditions.
Before sending a patch to the maintainer of rfc2388 i just want to ask  
which of the following is better/faster:
a) to bind *default-file-character-encoding* to nil just before the  
creation of the filestream, or
b) include an :external-format (ccl::make-external-format :character- 
encoding :iso-8859-1 :line-termination :unix) in the call to with-open- 
file

Further i would like to know if there may appear further problems when  
i change the default character-encoding.
(One i'am aware of is that asdf-install can't download packages  
anymore, but since i don't use that very often i can circumvent this  
problem)

cheers
Ralf