zalgo

> I've been wondering lately why more isn't done with Unicode-art. / > / the closest thing I can think to that is zalgo, which is more stupidity than art.

2010 June 14, oonh, “Re: (Futurist Comments) That was Then, This is Now”, in alt.gothic (Usenet), message-ID <nfohe7-48k.ln1@abyss.ninehells.com>

i should also note that zalgo cannot be summoned on all operating systems / applications. i'm not sure of the exact requirements to make it render, but i'm sure someone smarter^([sic]) then me could answer.

2010 August 11, Marak Squires, “Re: [nodejs] [javasc]”, in nodejs (Google Groups), ID AANLkTinMAjt-HK75kBiJa84rmd3MXJAz_Wx4Lyct6+=U@mail.gmail.com

Add support for Zalgo / The Linux kernel is woefully unprepared for the coming of Z҉A҉L҉G҉O̚̕̚ . T̀hi͘͡ş̸ p̸͏á̕t̢̕͢c̨̕h͟͟ ̴̧ą҉͘d͟͡d̢ş͡ s͏u̸͘p͠p̛͞͡o͟r̸t͜ ̷͟f̢͘͡o͜ŗ̛ ̴̧Z͝a҉lģ̡o͡ ̸t̕͞o̵͝ ̨k̶é͢r̶̨ne͘l҉҉̧ ͜m̶͞e̵s͘҉s̢̢͠a͠ǵ͟ę̸͞ ́oú͢͟tp̢̕͘u͞t͢ in order to ready those who will otherwise be ea͓̙ten at the arrival. Do n̹͝ot delͤ̀a̲̱͛y.

2010 October 22, Matthew Garrett, “[PATCH] Add Zalgo support”, in fa.linux.kernel (Usenet), message-ID <fa.CpgkBfBod2+tK+RSA6JtXMFuaWY@ifi.uio.no>

Ah, things get tricky here; Unicode is kind of a bear when you consider 'characters' because its codepoints aren't necessarily characters. An example would be the so-called "combining characters" which you can use for things like accents or ZALGO-text.

2013 March 16, Shark8, “Re: Is this expected behavior or not”, in comp.lang.ada (Usenet), message-ID <dfbf65c5-4f2e-4bb2-8b66-8db8ccb36d04@googlegroups.com>

But Jake could still play around with Zalgo script, a type of programmable font that packed lots of digital bytes into each letter.

2013 August 4, Parmy Olson, We Are Anonymous, Random House, →ISBN

Anyway. My personal opinion is that people are making a bigger deal about it than it needs to be. Just be aware that there could maybe potentially be an issue in your app if you release Zalgo, but don't spend the hours going through and wrapping everything in nextTick just to say you are Zalgo-free even if Zalgo being released has ever doomed you.

2013 August 30, Paul, “Re: [nodejs] Downside to not wrapping sync callbacks in nextTick()?”, in nodejs (Google Groups), 53ece666-5929-41ba-843c-edc4350af00d@googlegroups.com

Another crucial detail is to consider the unleashing Zalgo anti-pattern (we have seen it in action in Chapter 1, Node.js Design Fundamentals).

2014 December 30, Mario Casciaro, Luciano Mammino, “Chapter 6”, in Node.js Design Patterns, Packt, →ISBN, page 281

The explosion in execution branches makes explaining and testing this approach difficult, and reliable behavior in a production environment more challenging. Isaac Schlueter has written a popular blog post about this titled “Designing APIs for Asynchrony,” in which he refers to the inconsistent behavior as “releasing Zalgo.”

2015 July, Daniel Parker, “Chapter 1: Asynchronous JavaScript”, in JavaScript with Promises: Managing Asynchronous Code, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 6

The JavaScript community, for instance, has discovered a monstrous entity named “Zalgo.” […] When you are passing around lambdas, it is easy to release Zalgo if you mix synchronous and asynchronous styles.

2015, Robert Fischer, “Chapter 2: Understanding Lambdas in Java 8”, in Java Closures and Lambda, →ISBN, Don’t Release Zalgo, page 29