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encoding(3) Perl Programmers Reference Guide encoding(3)
NAME
encoding - allows you to write your script in non-ascii or non-utf8
SYNOPSIS
use encoding "greek"; # Perl like Greek to you?
use encoding "euc-jp"; # Jperl!
# or you can even do this if your shell supports your native encoding
perl -Mencoding=latin2 -e '...' # Feeling centrally European?
perl -Mencoding=euc-kr -e '...' # Or Korean?
# more control
# A simple euc-cn => utf-8 converter
use encoding "euc-cn", STDOUT => "utf8"; while(<>){print};
# "no encoding;" supported (but not scoped!)
no encoding;
# an alternate way, Filter
use encoding "euc-jp", Filter=>1;
# now you can use kanji identifiers -- in euc-jp!
# switch on locale -
# note that this probably means that unless you have a complete control
# over the environments the application is ever going to be run, you should
# NOT use the feature of encoding pragma allowing you to write your script
# in any recognized encoding because changing locale settings will wreck
# the script; you can of course still use the other features of the pragma.
use encoding ':locale';
ABSTRACT
Let's start with a bit of history: Perl 5.6.0 introduced Unicode sup-
port. You could apply "substr()" and regexes even to complex CJK char-
acters -- so long as the script was written in UTF-8. But back then,
text editors that supported UTF-8 were still rare and many users
instead chose to write scripts in legacy encodings, giving up a whole
new feature of Perl 5.6.
Rewind to the future: starting from perl 5.8.0 with the encoding
pragma, you can write your script in any encoding you like (so long as
the "Encode" module supports it) and still enjoy Unicode support. This
pragma achieves that by doing the following:
o Internally converts all literals ("q//,qq//,qr//,qw///, qx//") from
the encoding specified to utf8. In Perl 5.8.1 and later, literals
in "tr///" and "DATA" pseudo-filehandle are also converted.
o Changing PerlIO layers of "STDIN" and "STDOUT" to the encoding
specified.
Literal Conversions
You can write code in EUC-JP as follows:
my $Rakuda = "\xF1\xD1\xF1\xCC"; # Camel in Kanji
#<-char-><-char-> # 4 octets
s/\bCamel\b/$Rakuda/;
And with "use encoding "euc-jp"" in effect, it is the same thing as the
code in UTF-8:
my $Rakuda = "\x{99F1}\x{99DD}"; # two Unicode Characters
s/\bCamel\b/$Rakuda/;
PerlIO layers for "STD(IN|OUT)"
The encoding pragma also modifies the filehandle layers of STDIN and
STDOUT to the specified encoding. Therefore,
use encoding "euc-jp";
my $message = "Camel is the symbol of perl.\n";
my $Rakuda = "\xF1\xD1\xF1\xCC"; # Camel in Kanji
$message =~ s/\bCamel\b/$Rakuda/;
print $message;
Will print "\xF1\xD1\xF1\xCC is the symbol of perl.\n", not
"\x{99F1}\x{99DD} is the symbol of perl.\n".
You can override this by giving extra arguments; see below.
Implicit upgrading for byte strings
By default, if strings operating under byte semantics and strings with
Unicode character data are concatenated, the new string will be created
by decoding the byte strings as ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1).
The encoding pragma changes this to use the specified encoding instead.
For example:
use encoding 'utf8';
my $string = chr(20000); # a Unicode string
utf8::encode($string); # now it's a UTF-8 encoded byte string
# concatenate with another Unicode string
print length($string . chr(20000));
Will print 2, because $string is upgraded as UTF-8. Without "use
encoding 'utf8';", it will print 4 instead, since $string is three
octets when interpreted as Latin-1.
FEATURES THAT REQUIRE 5.8.1
Some of the features offered by this pragma requires perl 5.8.1. Most
of these are done by Inaba Hiroto. Any other features and changes are
good for 5.8.0.
"NON-EUC" doublebyte encodings
Because perl needs to parse script before applying this pragma,
such encodings as Shift_JIS and Big-5 that may contain '\' (BACK-
SLASH; \x5c) in the second byte fails because the second byte may
accidentally escape the quoting character that follows. Perl 5.8.1
or later fixes this problem.
tr//
"tr//" was overlooked by Perl 5 porters when they released perl
5.8.0 See the section below for details.
DATA pseudo-filehandle
Another feature that was overlooked was "DATA".
USAGE
use encoding [ENCNAME] ;
Sets the script encoding to ENCNAME. And unless ${^UNICODE} exists
and non-zero, PerlIO layers of STDIN and STDOUT are set to ":encod-
ing(ENCNAME)".
Note that STDERR WILL NOT be changed.
Also note that non-STD file handles remain unaffected. Use "use
open" or "binmode" to change layers of those.
If no encoding is specified, the environment variable PERL_ENCODING
is consulted. If no encoding can be found, the error "Unknown
encoding 'ENCNAME'" will be thrown.
use encoding ENCNAME [ STDIN => ENCNAME_IN ...] ;
You can also individually set encodings of STDIN and STDOUT via the
"STDIN => ENCNAME" form. In this case, you cannot omit the first
ENCNAME. "STDIN => undef" turns the IO transcoding completely off.
When ${^UNICODE} exists and non-zero, these options will completely
ignored. ${^UNICODE} is a variable introduced in perl 5.8.1. See
perlrun see "${^UNICODE}" in perlvar and "-C" in perlrun for
details (perl 5.8.1 and later).
use encoding ENCNAME Filter=>1;
This turns the encoding pragma into a source filter. While the
default approach just decodes interpolated literals (in qq() and
qr()), this will apply a source filter to the entire source code.
See "The Filter Option" below for details.
no encoding;
Unsets the script encoding. The layers of STDIN, STDOUT are reset
to ":raw" (the default unprocessed raw stream of bytes).
The Filter Option
The magic of "use encoding" is not applied to the names of identifiers.
In order to make "${"\x{4eba}"}++" ($human++, where human is a single
Han ideograph) work, you still need to write your script in UTF-8 -- or
use a source filter. That's what 'Filter=>1' does.
What does this mean? Your source code behaves as if it is written in
UTF-8 with 'use utf8' in effect. So even if your editor only supports
Shift_JIS, for example, you can still try examples in Chapter 15 of
"Programming Perl, 3rd Ed.". For instance, you can use UTF-8 identi-
fiers.
This option is significantly slower and (as of this writing) non-ASCII
identifiers are not very stable WITHOUT this option and with the source
code written in UTF-8.
Filter-related changes at Encode version 1.87
o The Filter option now sets STDIN and STDOUT like non-filter
options. And "STDIN=>ENCODING" and "STDOUT=>ENCODING" work like
non-filter version.
o "use utf8" is implicitly declared so you no longer have to "use
utf8" to "${"\x{4eba}"}++".
CAVEATS
NOT SCOPED
The pragma is a per script, not a per block lexical. Only the last
"use encoding" or "no encoding" matters, and it affects the whole
script. However, the pragma is supported and use encod-
ing can appear as many times as you want in a given script. The multi-
ple use of this pragma is discouraged.
By the same reason, the use this pragma inside modules is also discour-
aged (though not as strongly discouraged as the case above. See
below).
If you still have to write a module with this pragma, be very careful
of the load order. See the codes below;
# called module
package Module_IN_BAR;
use encoding "bar";
# stuff in "bar" encoding here
1;
# caller script
use encoding "foo"
use Module_IN_BAR;
# surprise! use encoding "bar" is in effect.
The best way to avoid this oddity is to use this pragma RIGHT AFTER
other modules are loaded. i.e.
use Module_IN_BAR;
use encoding "foo";
DO NOT MIX MULTIPLE ENCODINGS
Notice that only literals (string or regular expression) having only
legacy code points are affected: if you mix data like this
\xDF\x{100}
the data is assumed to be in (Latin 1 and) Unicode, not in your native
encoding. In other words, this will match in "greek":
"\xDF" =~ /\x{3af}/
but this will not
"\xDF\x{100}" =~ /\x{3af}\x{100}/
since the "\xDF" (ISO 8859-7 GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH TONOS) on the
left will not be upgraded to "\x{3af}" (Unicode GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA
WITH TONOS) because of the "\x{100}" on the left. You should not be
mixing your legacy data and Unicode in the same string.
This pragma also affects encoding of the 0x80..0xFF code point range:
normally characters in that range are left as eight-bit bytes (unless
they are combined with characters with code points 0x100 or larger, in
which case all characters need to become UTF-8 encoded), but if the
"encoding" pragma is present, even the 0x80..0xFF range always gets
UTF-8 encoded.
After all, the best thing about this pragma is that you don't have to
resort to \x{....} just to spell your name in a native encoding. So
feel free to put your strings in your encoding in quotes and regexes.
tr/// with ranges
The encoding pragma works by decoding string literals in
"q//,qq//,qr//,qw///, qx//" and so forth. In perl 5.8.0, this does not
apply to "tr///". Therefore,
use encoding 'euc-jp';
#....
$kana =~ tr/\xA4\xA1-\xA4\xF3/\xA5\xA1-\xA5\xF3/;
# -------- -------- -------- --------
Does not work as
$kana =~ tr/\x{3041}-\x{3093}/\x{30a1}-\x{30f3}/;
Legend of characters above
utf8 euc-jp charnames::viacode()
-----------------------------------------
\x{3041} \xA4\xA1 HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL A
\x{3093} \xA4\xF3 HIRAGANA LETTER N
\x{30a1} \xA5\xA1 KATAKANA LETTER SMALL A
\x{30f3} \xA5\xF3 KATAKANA LETTER N
This counterintuitive behavior has been fixed in perl 5.8.1.
workaround to tr///;
In perl 5.8.0, you can work around as follows;
use encoding 'euc-jp';
# ....
eval qq{ \$kana =~ tr/\xA4\xA1-\xA4\xF3/\xA5\xA1-\xA5\xF3/ };
Note the "tr//" expression is surrounded by "qq{}". The idea behind is
the same as classic idiom that makes "tr///" 'interpolate'.
tr/$from/$to/; # wrong!
eval qq{ tr/$from/$to/ }; # workaround.
Nevertheless, in case of encoding pragma even "q//" is affected so
"tr///" not being decoded was obviously against the will of Perl5
Porters so it has been fixed in Perl 5.8.1 or later.
EXAMPLE - Greekperl
use encoding "iso 8859-7";
# \xDF in ISO 8859-7 (Greek) is \x{3af} in Unicode.
$a = "\xDF";
$b = "\x{100}";
printf "%#x\n", ord($a); # will print 0x3af, not 0xdf
$c = $a . $b;
# $c will be "\x{3af}\x{100}", not "\x{df}\x{100}".
# chr() is affected, and ...
print "mega\n" if ord(chr(0xdf)) == 0x3af;
# ... ord() is affected by the encoding pragma ...
print "tera\n" if ord(pack("C", 0xdf)) == 0x3af;
# ... as are eq and cmp ...
print "peta\n" if "\x{3af}" eq pack("C", 0xdf);
print "exa\n" if "\x{3af}" cmp pack("C", 0xdf) == 0;
# ... but pack/unpack C are not affected, in case you still
# want to go back to your native encoding
print "zetta\n" if unpack("C", (pack("C", 0xdf))) == 0xdf;
KNOWN PROBLEMS
literals in regex that are longer than 127 bytes
For native multibyte encodings (either fixed or variable length),
the current implementation of the regular expressions may introduce
recoding errors for regular expression literals longer than 127
bytes.
EBCDIC
The encoding pragma is not supported on EBCDIC platforms. (Porters
who are willing and able to remove this limitation are welcome.)
format
This pragma doesn't work well with format because PerlIO does not
get along very well with it. When format contains non-ascii char-
acters it prints funny or gets "wide character warnings". To
understand it, try the code below.
# Save this one in utf8
# replace *non-ascii* with a non-ascii string
my $camel;
format STDOUT =
*non-ascii*@>>>>>>>
$camel
.
$camel = "*non-ascii*";
binmode(STDOUT=>':encoding(utf8)'); # bang!
write; # funny
print $camel, "\n"; # fine
Without binmode this happens to work but without binmode, print()
fails instead of write().
At any rate, the very use of format is questionable when it comes
to unicode characters since you have to consider such things as
character width (i.e. double-width for ideographs) and directions
(i.e. BIDI for Arabic and Hebrew).
The Logic of :locale
The logic of ":locale" is as follows:
1. If the platform supports the langinfo(CODESET) interface, the code-
set returned is used as the default encoding for the open pragma.
2. If 1. didn't work but we are under the locale pragma, the environ-
ment variables LC_ALL and LANG (in that order) are matched for
encodings (the part after ".", if any), and if any found, that is
used as the default encoding for the open pragma.
3. If 1. and 2. didn't work, the environment variables LC_ALL and LANG
(in that order) are matched for anything looking like UTF-8, and if
any found, ":utf8" is used as the default encoding for the open
pragma.
If your locale environment variables (LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG) contain
the strings 'UTF-8' or 'UTF8' (case-insensitive matching), the default
encoding of your STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and of any subsequent file
open, is UTF-8.
HISTORY
This pragma first appeared in Perl 5.8.0. For features that require
5.8.1 and better, see above.
The ":locale" subpragma was implemented in 2.01, or Perl 5.8.6.
SEE ALSO
perlunicode, Encode, open, Filter::Util::Call,
Ch. 15 of "Programming Perl (3rd Edition)" by Larry Wall, Tom Chris-
tiansen, Jon Orwant; O'Reilly & Associates; ISBN 0-596-00027-8
perl v5.8.8 2001-09-21 encoding(3)
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