IMHO, it would have been to repurpose the existing format for Unicode (specifically UTF-8) text and have a special notation for binary/ascii text.
It’s interpreted code, ffs. It’s not like you have pre-compiled binaries you need to stay ABI compatible with (like Microsoft did when they introduced TCHAR and co).
It’s interpreted code, ffs. It’s not like you have pre-compiled binaries you need to stay ABI compatible with (like Microsoft did when they introduced TCHAR and co).