mimic
[ab]using Unicode to create tragedy
Introduction
mimic provokes:
- fun
- frustration
- curiosity
- murderous rage
It's inspired by this terrible idea floating around:
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
— Peter Ritchie (@peterritchie) November 16, 2014There 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:
"BUT WHY?"
Or, if you've been mimicked a little harder,
Discussion
People have noticed how terrible this is.