Data type 160

[rpullman]

Why do I get a domain error with data ⎕nappend ntie when 160=⎕DR data? I am running Rel 12.0.5 on 64-bit Vista box.

[rpullman]

I mean, why not default to the same data type as the left argument

[Morten|Dyalog]

The first cut at the design did default the data type as you suggest. However, we quickly discovered that if you output text to a native file in several pieces and some of them happen not to have any characters above number 255 (for example if you appended some blanks to the file), you would end up with a file in which some of the characters consumed 2 bytes each, and others consumed a single byte. This would almost definitely cause a problem for anyone trying to read the file.

Therefore, we decided to require an explicit width declaration when appending characters to a native file in the Unicode edition.