Ruby OCI, you make me sad…

unicode_update.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
ENV['NLS_LANG'] = 'AMERICAN_AMERICA.UTF8'
require 'oci8'

def exec( connection, sql )
  puts "exec: #{sql}"
  connection.exec( sql ) { |r| puts r.join(', ') }
end

def main
  connection = OCI8.new "dev", "password", "orcl"
  exec connection, %q"select unistr('\200b') from dual" # This is okay

  # The next two will never return.  WTF why?
  exec connection, %Q{UPDATE users SET last_name  = '\u200b' WHERE (last_name  IS NULL)}
  exec connection, %q{UPDATE users SET last_name  = UNISTR('\200b') WHERE (last_name  IS NULL)}

  connection.commit
ensure
  connection.logoff
end

main