-={ samedi, avril 04 2015, 08:22:38 -0700 }=-

Hey Nicholas!

 NB> like an "x" with a circle in the middle of it.

That sounds right.  According to http://www.utf8-chartable.de/ that is called
"CURRENCY SIGN".

 NB> The second was the Euro sign,

Yep.  Also confirmed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO/IEC_8859-15.

 NB> and the third was an "n" with a squiggly tilde thing above it.

Yep again, and confirmation can be found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_page_437.

Bottomline with the test is that the code is exactly the same for all three
(0xa4) and produces three completely different characters in 8-bit codepages,
while they are indeed unique in utf8 (u00a4, u20ac and u00f1).

Seems to me the argument to support 8-bit codepages in a distributed network
continues to be extremely flimsy even if one ignores the obvious flaws in the
published so-called 'standard' which will remain nameless in this message for
fear that someone might take it seriously and attempt to code that crap in an
application.  :::shudder:::

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.3.33(1)-release (x86_64-atom-linux-gnu)