mimic
[ab]using Unicode to create tragedy
Introduction
<img alt="monster" align="right" src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1236420/10557120/f1faedfe-746b-11e5-8a7b-671bd3e30691.jpg" />
mimic provokes:
- fun
- frustration
- curiosity
- murderous rage
It's inspired by this terrible idea floating around:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">MT: Replace a semicolon (;) with a greek question mark (;) in your friend's C# code and watch them pull their hair out over the syntax error</p>— Peter Ritchie (@peterritchie) <a href="https://twitter.com/peterritchie/status/534011965132120064">November 16, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>There are many more characters in the Unicode character set that look, to some extent or another, like others – homoglyphs. Mimic substitutes common ASCII characters for obscure homoglyphs.
Fun games to play with mimic:
- Pipe some source code through and see if you can find all of the problems
- Pipe someone else's source code through without telling them
- Be fired, and then killed
Results
Observe the mayhem:
<img alt="some bad code" src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1236420/10564931/76507da4-7592-11e5-9971-f6a04ad06298.png" /> "BUT WHY?"
Or, if you've been mimicked a little harder,
<img alt="some worse code" src="https://cloud.githubusercontent.com/assets/1236420/10564914/f7963ae4-7591-11e5-9b45-f123e42b22f4.png" />
Discussion
People have noticed how terrible this is.