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Puzzle 10: Explanation

Explore the concept of Unicode homoglyphs and how similar characters differ in byte encoding within Rust strings. Understand issues related to string length, phishing risks, and the complications UTF-8 modifier characters introduce during string manipulation. Learn about Rust tools and compiler warnings that help detect these challenges in code.

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Test it out

Hit “Run” to see the code’s output.

C++
fn main() {
    if 'X' == 'Χ' {
        println!("It matches!");
    } else {
        println!("It doesn't match.");
    }
}

Explanation

Unicode allows for homoglyphs, which are characters that are very similar or identical and can be encoded in different ways. The first X is the Latin Unicode character, encoded as 0x58. The second Χ is the capitalized version of the Greek letter chi, encoded in UTF- 8 as 0xCE 0xA7. If we look closely, they aren’t quite identical, but in some fonts, notably Consolas ...