In 1978 Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry established the encoding that would later be known as JIS X 0208, which still serves as an important reference for all Japanese encodings. However, after the JIS standard was released people noticed something strange - several of the added characters had no obvious sources, and nobody could tell what they meant or how they should be pronounced. Nobody was sure where they came from. These are what came to be known as the ghost characters (幽霊文字).
  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
    4 days

    The core ghost characters: 妛 挧 暃 椦 槞 蟐 袮 閠 駲 墸 壥 彁

    The article only details the first one, 妛, which happens to be a literal paper cut and paste that was misread, and the last one, 彁, that was possibly a misread from a similar looking character. Would’ve been nice if it explained some of the others

  • nomad@infosec.pub
    4 days

    Now paste that into the shell to get “ghost in the shell” … Or a segfault.