Commit | Line | Data |
393fec97 |
1 | =head1 NAME |
2 | |
3 | perlunicode - Unicode support in Perl |
4 | |
5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION |
6 | |
0a1f2d14 |
7 | =head2 Important Caveats |
21bad921 |
8 | |
376d9008 |
9 | Unicode support is an extensive requirement. While Perl does not |
c349b1b9 |
10 | implement the Unicode standard or the accompanying technical reports |
11 | from cover to cover, Perl does support many Unicode features. |
21bad921 |
12 | |
13a2d996 |
13 | =over 4 |
21bad921 |
14 | |
fae2c0fb |
15 | =item Input and Output Layers |
21bad921 |
16 | |
376d9008 |
17 | Perl knows when a filehandle uses Perl's internal Unicode encodings |
1bfb14c4 |
18 | (UTF-8, or UTF-EBCDIC if in EBCDIC) if the filehandle is opened with |
19 | the ":utf8" layer. Other encodings can be converted to Perl's |
20 | encoding on input or from Perl's encoding on output by use of the |
21 | ":encoding(...)" layer. See L<open>. |
c349b1b9 |
22 | |
376d9008 |
23 | To indicate that Perl source itself is using a particular encoding, |
c349b1b9 |
24 | see L<encoding>. |
21bad921 |
25 | |
26 | =item Regular Expressions |
27 | |
c349b1b9 |
28 | The regular expression compiler produces polymorphic opcodes. That is, |
376d9008 |
29 | the pattern adapts to the data and automatically switches to the Unicode |
30 | character scheme when presented with Unicode data--or instead uses |
31 | a traditional byte scheme when presented with byte data. |
21bad921 |
32 | |
ad0029c4 |
33 | =item C<use utf8> still needed to enable UTF-8/UTF-EBCDIC in scripts |
21bad921 |
34 | |
376d9008 |
35 | As a compatibility measure, the C<use utf8> pragma must be explicitly |
36 | included to enable recognition of UTF-8 in the Perl scripts themselves |
1bfb14c4 |
37 | (in string or regular expression literals, or in identifier names) on |
38 | ASCII-based machines or to recognize UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC-based |
376d9008 |
39 | machines. B<These are the only times when an explicit C<use utf8> |
8f8cf39c |
40 | is needed.> See L<utf8>. |
21bad921 |
41 | |
1768d7eb |
42 | You can also use the C<encoding> pragma to change the default encoding |
6ec9efec |
43 | of the data in your script; see L<encoding>. |
1768d7eb |
44 | |
7aa207d6 |
45 | =item BOM-marked scripts and UTF-16 scripts autodetected |
46 | |
47 | If a Perl script begins marked with the Unicode BOM (UTF-16LE, UTF16-BE, |
48 | or UTF-8), or if the script looks like non-BOM-marked UTF-16 of either |
49 | endianness, Perl will correctly read in the script as Unicode. |
50 | (BOMless UTF-8 cannot be effectively recognized or differentiated from |
51 | ISO 8859-1 or other eight-bit encodings.) |
52 | |
990e18f7 |
53 | =item C<use encoding> needed to upgrade non-Latin-1 byte strings |
54 | |
55 | By default, there is a fundamental asymmetry in Perl's unicode model: |
56 | implicit upgrading from byte strings to Unicode strings assumes that |
57 | they were encoded in I<ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1)>, but Unicode strings are |
58 | downgraded with UTF-8 encoding. This happens because the first 256 |
59 | codepoints in Unicode happens to agree with Latin-1. |
60 | |
61 | If you wish to interpret byte strings as UTF-8 instead, use the |
62 | C<encoding> pragma: |
63 | |
64 | use encoding 'utf8'; |
65 | |
66 | See L</"Byte and Character Semantics"> for more details. |
67 | |
21bad921 |
68 | =back |
69 | |
376d9008 |
70 | =head2 Byte and Character Semantics |
393fec97 |
71 | |
376d9008 |
72 | Beginning with version 5.6, Perl uses logically-wide characters to |
3e4dbfed |
73 | represent strings internally. |
393fec97 |
74 | |
376d9008 |
75 | In future, Perl-level operations will be expected to work with |
76 | characters rather than bytes. |
393fec97 |
77 | |
376d9008 |
78 | However, as an interim compatibility measure, Perl aims to |
75daf61c |
79 | provide a safe migration path from byte semantics to character |
80 | semantics for programs. For operations where Perl can unambiguously |
376d9008 |
81 | decide that the input data are characters, Perl switches to |
75daf61c |
82 | character semantics. For operations where this determination cannot |
83 | be made without additional information from the user, Perl decides in |
376d9008 |
84 | favor of compatibility and chooses to use byte semantics. |
8cbd9a7a |
85 | |
86 | This behavior preserves compatibility with earlier versions of Perl, |
376d9008 |
87 | which allowed byte semantics in Perl operations only if |
88 | none of the program's inputs were marked as being as source of Unicode |
8cbd9a7a |
89 | character data. Such data may come from filehandles, from calls to |
90 | external programs, from information provided by the system (such as %ENV), |
21bad921 |
91 | or from literals and constants in the source text. |
8cbd9a7a |
92 | |
376d9008 |
93 | The C<bytes> pragma will always, regardless of platform, force byte |
94 | semantics in a particular lexical scope. See L<bytes>. |
8cbd9a7a |
95 | |
96 | The C<utf8> pragma is primarily a compatibility device that enables |
75daf61c |
97 | recognition of UTF-(8|EBCDIC) in literals encountered by the parser. |
376d9008 |
98 | Note that this pragma is only required while Perl defaults to byte |
99 | semantics; when character semantics become the default, this pragma |
100 | may become a no-op. See L<utf8>. |
101 | |
102 | Unless explicitly stated, Perl operators use character semantics |
103 | for Unicode data and byte semantics for non-Unicode data. |
104 | The decision to use character semantics is made transparently. If |
105 | input data comes from a Unicode source--for example, if a character |
fae2c0fb |
106 | encoding layer is added to a filehandle or a literal Unicode |
376d9008 |
107 | string constant appears in a program--character semantics apply. |
108 | Otherwise, byte semantics are in effect. The C<bytes> pragma should |
109 | be used to force byte semantics on Unicode data. |
110 | |
111 | If strings operating under byte semantics and strings with Unicode |
990e18f7 |
112 | character data are concatenated, the new string will be created by |
113 | decoding the byte strings as I<ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1)>, even if the |
114 | old Unicode string used EBCDIC. This translation is done without |
115 | regard to the system's native 8-bit encoding. To change this for |
116 | systems with non-Latin-1 and non-EBCDIC native encodings, use the |
117 | C<encoding> pragma. See L<encoding>. |
7dedd01f |
118 | |
feda178f |
119 | Under character semantics, many operations that formerly operated on |
376d9008 |
120 | bytes now operate on characters. A character in Perl is |
feda178f |
121 | logically just a number ranging from 0 to 2**31 or so. Larger |
376d9008 |
122 | characters may encode into longer sequences of bytes internally, but |
123 | this internal detail is mostly hidden for Perl code. |
124 | See L<perluniintro> for more. |
393fec97 |
125 | |
376d9008 |
126 | =head2 Effects of Character Semantics |
393fec97 |
127 | |
128 | Character semantics have the following effects: |
129 | |
130 | =over 4 |
131 | |
132 | =item * |
133 | |
376d9008 |
134 | Strings--including hash keys--and regular expression patterns may |
574c8022 |
135 | contain characters that have an ordinal value larger than 255. |
393fec97 |
136 | |
feda178f |
137 | If you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, Unicode characters |
138 | may occur directly within the literal strings in one of the various |
376d9008 |
139 | Unicode encodings (UTF-8, UTF-EBCDIC, UCS-2, etc.), but will be recognized |
140 | as such and converted to Perl's internal representation only if the |
feda178f |
141 | appropriate L<encoding> is specified. |
3e4dbfed |
142 | |
1bfb14c4 |
143 | Unicode characters can also be added to a string by using the |
144 | C<\x{...}> notation. The Unicode code for the desired character, in |
376d9008 |
145 | hexadecimal, should be placed in the braces. For instance, a smiley |
146 | face is C<\x{263A}>. This encoding scheme only works for characters |
147 | with a code of 0x100 or above. |
3e4dbfed |
148 | |
149 | Additionally, if you |
574c8022 |
150 | |
3e4dbfed |
151 | use charnames ':full'; |
574c8022 |
152 | |
1bfb14c4 |
153 | you can use the C<\N{...}> notation and put the official Unicode |
154 | character name within the braces, such as C<\N{WHITE SMILING FACE}>. |
376d9008 |
155 | |
393fec97 |
156 | =item * |
157 | |
574c8022 |
158 | If an appropriate L<encoding> is specified, identifiers within the |
159 | Perl script may contain Unicode alphanumeric characters, including |
376d9008 |
160 | ideographs. Perl does not currently attempt to canonicalize variable |
161 | names. |
393fec97 |
162 | |
393fec97 |
163 | =item * |
164 | |
1bfb14c4 |
165 | Regular expressions match characters instead of bytes. "." matches |
166 | a character instead of a byte. The C<\C> pattern is provided to force |
167 | a match a single byte--a C<char> in C, hence C<\C>. |
393fec97 |
168 | |
393fec97 |
169 | =item * |
170 | |
171 | Character classes in regular expressions match characters instead of |
376d9008 |
172 | bytes and match against the character properties specified in the |
1bfb14c4 |
173 | Unicode properties database. C<\w> can be used to match a Japanese |
75daf61c |
174 | ideograph, for instance. |
393fec97 |
175 | |
b08eb2a8 |
176 | (However, and as a limitation of the current implementation, using |
177 | C<\w> or C<\W> I<inside> a C<[...]> character class will still match |
178 | with byte semantics.) |
179 | |
393fec97 |
180 | =item * |
181 | |
eb0cc9e3 |
182 | Named Unicode properties, scripts, and block ranges may be used like |
376d9008 |
183 | character classes via the C<\p{}> "matches property" construct and |
822502e5 |
184 | the C<\P{}> negation, "doesn't match property". |
185 | |
186 | See L</"Unicode Character Properties"> for more details. |
187 | |
188 | You can define your own character properties and use them |
189 | in the regular expression with the C<\p{}> or C<\P{}> construct. |
190 | |
191 | See L</"User-Defined Character Properties"> for more details. |
192 | |
193 | =item * |
194 | |
195 | The special pattern C<\X> matches any extended Unicode |
196 | sequence--"a combining character sequence" in Standardese--where the |
197 | first character is a base character and subsequent characters are mark |
198 | characters that apply to the base character. C<\X> is equivalent to |
199 | C<(?:\PM\pM*)>. |
200 | |
201 | =item * |
202 | |
203 | The C<tr///> operator translates characters instead of bytes. Note |
204 | that the C<tr///CU> functionality has been removed. For similar |
205 | functionality see pack('U0', ...) and pack('C0', ...). |
206 | |
207 | =item * |
208 | |
209 | Case translation operators use the Unicode case translation tables |
210 | when character input is provided. Note that C<uc()>, or C<\U> in |
211 | interpolated strings, translates to uppercase, while C<ucfirst>, |
212 | or C<\u> in interpolated strings, translates to titlecase in languages |
213 | that make the distinction. |
214 | |
215 | =item * |
216 | |
217 | Most operators that deal with positions or lengths in a string will |
218 | automatically switch to using character positions, including |
219 | C<chop()>, C<chomp()>, C<substr()>, C<pos()>, C<index()>, C<rindex()>, |
220 | C<sprintf()>, C<write()>, and C<length()>. An operator that |
221 | specifically does not switch is C<vec()>. Operators that really don't |
222 | care include operators that treat strings as a bucket of bits such as |
223 | C<sort()>, and operators dealing with filenames. |
224 | |
225 | =item * |
226 | |
227 | The C<pack()>/C<unpack()> letter C<C> does I<not> change, since it is often |
228 | used for byte-oriented formats. Again, think C<char> in the C language. |
229 | |
230 | There is a new C<U> specifier that converts between Unicode characters |
231 | and code points. There is also a C<W> specifier that is the equivalent of |
232 | C<chr>/C<ord> and properly handles character values even if they are above 255. |
233 | |
234 | =item * |
235 | |
236 | The C<chr()> and C<ord()> functions work on characters, similar to |
237 | C<pack("W")> and C<unpack("W")>, I<not> C<pack("C")> and |
238 | C<unpack("C")>. C<pack("C")> and C<unpack("C")> are methods for |
239 | emulating byte-oriented C<chr()> and C<ord()> on Unicode strings. |
240 | While these methods reveal the internal encoding of Unicode strings, |
241 | that is not something one normally needs to care about at all. |
242 | |
243 | =item * |
244 | |
245 | The bit string operators, C<& | ^ ~>, can operate on character data. |
246 | However, for backward compatibility, such as when using bit string |
247 | operations when characters are all less than 256 in ordinal value, one |
248 | should not use C<~> (the bit complement) with characters of both |
249 | values less than 256 and values greater than 256. Most importantly, |
250 | DeMorgan's laws (C<~($x|$y) eq ~$x&~$y> and C<~($x&$y) eq ~$x|~$y>) |
251 | will not hold. The reason for this mathematical I<faux pas> is that |
252 | the complement cannot return B<both> the 8-bit (byte-wide) bit |
253 | complement B<and> the full character-wide bit complement. |
254 | |
255 | =item * |
256 | |
257 | lc(), uc(), lcfirst(), and ucfirst() work for the following cases: |
258 | |
259 | =over 8 |
260 | |
261 | =item * |
262 | |
263 | the case mapping is from a single Unicode character to another |
264 | single Unicode character, or |
265 | |
266 | =item * |
267 | |
268 | the case mapping is from a single Unicode character to more |
269 | than one Unicode character. |
270 | |
271 | =back |
272 | |
273 | Things to do with locales (Lithuanian, Turkish, Azeri) do B<not> work |
274 | since Perl does not understand the concept of Unicode locales. |
275 | |
276 | See the Unicode Technical Report #21, Case Mappings, for more details. |
277 | |
278 | But you can also define your own mappings to be used in the lc(), |
279 | lcfirst(), uc(), and ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions). |
280 | |
281 | See L</"User-Defined Case Mappings"> for more details. |
282 | |
283 | =back |
284 | |
285 | =over 4 |
286 | |
287 | =item * |
288 | |
289 | And finally, C<scalar reverse()> reverses by character rather than by byte. |
290 | |
291 | =back |
292 | |
293 | =head2 Unicode Character Properties |
294 | |
295 | Named Unicode properties, scripts, and block ranges may be used like |
296 | character classes via the C<\p{}> "matches property" construct and |
297 | the C<\P{}> negation, "doesn't match property". |
1bfb14c4 |
298 | |
299 | For instance, C<\p{Lu}> matches any character with the Unicode "Lu" |
300 | (Letter, uppercase) property, while C<\p{M}> matches any character |
301 | with an "M" (mark--accents and such) property. Brackets are not |
302 | required for single letter properties, so C<\p{M}> is equivalent to |
303 | C<\pM>. Many predefined properties are available, such as |
304 | C<\p{Mirrored}> and C<\p{Tibetan}>. |
4193bef7 |
305 | |
cfc01aea |
306 | The official Unicode script and block names have spaces and dashes as |
376d9008 |
307 | separators, but for convenience you can use dashes, spaces, or |
1bfb14c4 |
308 | underbars, and case is unimportant. It is recommended, however, that |
309 | for consistency you use the following naming: the official Unicode |
310 | script, property, or block name (see below for the additional rules |
311 | that apply to block names) with whitespace and dashes removed, and the |
312 | words "uppercase-first-lowercase-rest". C<Latin-1 Supplement> thus |
313 | becomes C<Latin1Supplement>. |
4193bef7 |
314 | |
376d9008 |
315 | You can also use negation in both C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> by introducing a caret |
316 | (^) between the first brace and the property name: C<\p{^Tamil}> is |
eb0cc9e3 |
317 | equal to C<\P{Tamil}>. |
4193bef7 |
318 | |
14bb0a9a |
319 | B<NOTE: the properties, scripts, and blocks listed here are as of |
8158862b |
320 | Unicode 5.0.0 in July 2006.> |
14bb0a9a |
321 | |
822502e5 |
322 | =over 4 |
323 | |
324 | =item General Category |
325 | |
eb0cc9e3 |
326 | Here are the basic Unicode General Category properties, followed by their |
68cd2d32 |
327 | long form. You can use either; C<\p{Lu}> and C<\p{UppercaseLetter}>, |
376d9008 |
328 | for instance, are identical. |
393fec97 |
329 | |
d73e5302 |
330 | Short Long |
331 | |
332 | L Letter |
12ac2576 |
333 | LC CasedLetter |
eb0cc9e3 |
334 | Lu UppercaseLetter |
335 | Ll LowercaseLetter |
336 | Lt TitlecaseLetter |
337 | Lm ModifierLetter |
338 | Lo OtherLetter |
d73e5302 |
339 | |
340 | M Mark |
eb0cc9e3 |
341 | Mn NonspacingMark |
342 | Mc SpacingMark |
343 | Me EnclosingMark |
d73e5302 |
344 | |
345 | N Number |
eb0cc9e3 |
346 | Nd DecimalNumber |
347 | Nl LetterNumber |
348 | No OtherNumber |
d73e5302 |
349 | |
350 | P Punctuation |
eb0cc9e3 |
351 | Pc ConnectorPunctuation |
352 | Pd DashPunctuation |
353 | Ps OpenPunctuation |
354 | Pe ClosePunctuation |
355 | Pi InitialPunctuation |
d73e5302 |
356 | (may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage) |
eb0cc9e3 |
357 | Pf FinalPunctuation |
d73e5302 |
358 | (may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage) |
eb0cc9e3 |
359 | Po OtherPunctuation |
d73e5302 |
360 | |
361 | S Symbol |
eb0cc9e3 |
362 | Sm MathSymbol |
363 | Sc CurrencySymbol |
364 | Sk ModifierSymbol |
365 | So OtherSymbol |
d73e5302 |
366 | |
367 | Z Separator |
eb0cc9e3 |
368 | Zs SpaceSeparator |
369 | Zl LineSeparator |
370 | Zp ParagraphSeparator |
d73e5302 |
371 | |
372 | C Other |
e150c829 |
373 | Cc Control |
374 | Cf Format |
eb0cc9e3 |
375 | Cs Surrogate (not usable) |
376 | Co PrivateUse |
e150c829 |
377 | Cn Unassigned |
1ac13f9a |
378 | |
376d9008 |
379 | Single-letter properties match all characters in any of the |
3e4dbfed |
380 | two-letter sub-properties starting with the same letter. |
12ac2576 |
381 | C<LC> and C<L&> are special cases, which are aliases for the set of |
382 | C<Ll>, C<Lu>, and C<Lt>. |
32293815 |
383 | |
eb0cc9e3 |
384 | Because Perl hides the need for the user to understand the internal |
1bfb14c4 |
385 | representation of Unicode characters, there is no need to implement |
386 | the somewhat messy concept of surrogates. C<Cs> is therefore not |
eb0cc9e3 |
387 | supported. |
d73e5302 |
388 | |
822502e5 |
389 | =item Bidirectional Character Types |
390 | |
376d9008 |
391 | Because scripts differ in their directionality--Hebrew is |
12ac2576 |
392 | written right to left, for example--Unicode supplies these properties in |
393 | the BidiClass class: |
32293815 |
394 | |
eb0cc9e3 |
395 | Property Meaning |
92e830a9 |
396 | |
12ac2576 |
397 | L Left-to-Right |
398 | LRE Left-to-Right Embedding |
399 | LRO Left-to-Right Override |
400 | R Right-to-Left |
401 | AL Right-to-Left Arabic |
402 | RLE Right-to-Left Embedding |
403 | RLO Right-to-Left Override |
404 | PDF Pop Directional Format |
405 | EN European Number |
406 | ES European Number Separator |
407 | ET European Number Terminator |
408 | AN Arabic Number |
409 | CS Common Number Separator |
410 | NSM Non-Spacing Mark |
411 | BN Boundary Neutral |
412 | B Paragraph Separator |
413 | S Segment Separator |
414 | WS Whitespace |
415 | ON Other Neutrals |
416 | |
417 | For example, C<\p{BidiClass:R}> matches characters that are normally |
eb0cc9e3 |
418 | written right to left. |
419 | |
822502e5 |
420 | =item Scripts |
2796c109 |
421 | |
376d9008 |
422 | The script names which can be used by C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}>, |
423 | such as in C<\p{Latin}> or C<\p{Cyrillic}>, are as follows: |
2796c109 |
424 | |
1ac13f9a |
425 | Arabic |
e9ad1727 |
426 | Armenian |
8158862b |
427 | Balinese |
1ac13f9a |
428 | Bengali |
e9ad1727 |
429 | Bopomofo |
8158862b |
430 | Braille |
431 | Buginese |
1d81abf3 |
432 | Buhid |
eb0cc9e3 |
433 | CanadianAboriginal |
e9ad1727 |
434 | Cherokee |
8158862b |
435 | Coptic |
436 | Cuneiform |
437 | Cypriot |
e9ad1727 |
438 | Cyrillic |
439 | Deseret |
440 | Devanagari |
441 | Ethiopic |
442 | Georgian |
8158862b |
443 | Glagolitic |
e9ad1727 |
444 | Gothic |
445 | Greek |
1ac13f9a |
446 | Gujarati |
e9ad1727 |
447 | Gurmukhi |
448 | Han |
449 | Hangul |
1d81abf3 |
450 | Hanunoo |
e9ad1727 |
451 | Hebrew |
452 | Hiragana |
453 | Inherited |
1ac13f9a |
454 | Kannada |
e9ad1727 |
455 | Katakana |
8158862b |
456 | Kharoshthi |
e9ad1727 |
457 | Khmer |
1ac13f9a |
458 | Lao |
e9ad1727 |
459 | Latin |
8158862b |
460 | Limbu |
461 | LinearB |
e9ad1727 |
462 | Malayalam |
463 | Mongolian |
1ac13f9a |
464 | Myanmar |
8158862b |
465 | NewTaiLue |
466 | Nko |
1ac13f9a |
467 | Ogham |
eb0cc9e3 |
468 | OldItalic |
8158862b |
469 | OldPersian |
e9ad1727 |
470 | Oriya |
8158862b |
471 | Osmanya |
472 | PhagsPa |
473 | Phoenician |
1ac13f9a |
474 | Runic |
8158862b |
475 | Shavian |
e9ad1727 |
476 | Sinhala |
8158862b |
477 | SylotiNagri |
e9ad1727 |
478 | Syriac |
1d81abf3 |
479 | Tagalog |
480 | Tagbanwa |
8158862b |
481 | TaiLe |
e9ad1727 |
482 | Tamil |
483 | Telugu |
484 | Thaana |
485 | Thai |
486 | Tibetan |
8158862b |
487 | Tifinagh |
488 | Ugaritic |
1ac13f9a |
489 | Yi |
1ac13f9a |
490 | |
822502e5 |
491 | =item Extended property classes |
492 | |
376d9008 |
493 | Extended property classes can supplement the basic |
1ac13f9a |
494 | properties, defined by the F<PropList> Unicode database: |
495 | |
1d81abf3 |
496 | ASCIIHexDigit |
eb0cc9e3 |
497 | BidiControl |
1ac13f9a |
498 | Dash |
1d81abf3 |
499 | Deprecated |
1ac13f9a |
500 | Diacritic |
501 | Extender |
eb0cc9e3 |
502 | HexDigit |
e9ad1727 |
503 | Hyphen |
504 | Ideographic |
1d81abf3 |
505 | IDSBinaryOperator |
506 | IDSTrinaryOperator |
eb0cc9e3 |
507 | JoinControl |
1d81abf3 |
508 | LogicalOrderException |
eb0cc9e3 |
509 | NoncharacterCodePoint |
510 | OtherAlphabetic |
1d81abf3 |
511 | OtherDefaultIgnorableCodePoint |
512 | OtherGraphemeExtend |
8158862b |
513 | OtherIDStart |
514 | OtherIDContinue |
eb0cc9e3 |
515 | OtherLowercase |
516 | OtherMath |
517 | OtherUppercase |
8158862b |
518 | PatternSyntax |
519 | PatternWhiteSpace |
eb0cc9e3 |
520 | QuotationMark |
1d81abf3 |
521 | Radical |
522 | SoftDotted |
8158862b |
523 | STerm |
1d81abf3 |
524 | TerminalPunctuation |
525 | UnifiedIdeograph |
8158862b |
526 | VariationSelector |
eb0cc9e3 |
527 | WhiteSpace |
1ac13f9a |
528 | |
376d9008 |
529 | and there are further derived properties: |
1ac13f9a |
530 | |
8158862b |
531 | Alphabetic = Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Nl + OtherAlphabetic |
532 | Lowercase = Ll + OtherLowercase |
533 | Uppercase = Lu + OtherUppercase |
534 | Math = Sm + OtherMath |
1ac13f9a |
535 | |
8158862b |
536 | IDStart = Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Nl + OtherIDStart |
537 | IDContinue = IDStart + Mn + Mc + Nd + Pc + OtherIDContinue |
1ac13f9a |
538 | |
8158862b |
539 | DefaultIgnorableCodePoint |
540 | = OtherDefaultIgnorableCodePoint |
541 | + Cf + Cc + Cs + Noncharacters + VariationSelector |
542 | - WhiteSpace - FFF9..FFFB (Annotation Characters) |
543 | |
544 | Any = Any code points (i.e. U+0000 to U+10FFFF) |
545 | Assigned = Any non-Cn code points (i.e. synonym for \P{Cn}) |
546 | Unassigned = Synonym for \p{Cn} |
547 | ASCII = ASCII (i.e. U+0000 to U+007F) |
548 | |
549 | Common = Any character (or unassigned code point) |
550 | not explicitly assigned to a script |
2796c109 |
551 | |
822502e5 |
552 | =item Use of "Is" Prefix |
553 | |
1bfb14c4 |
554 | For backward compatibility (with Perl 5.6), all properties mentioned |
555 | so far may have C<Is> prepended to their name, so C<\P{IsLu}>, for |
556 | example, is equal to C<\P{Lu}>. |
eb0cc9e3 |
557 | |
822502e5 |
558 | =item Blocks |
2796c109 |
559 | |
1bfb14c4 |
560 | In addition to B<scripts>, Unicode also defines B<blocks> of |
561 | characters. The difference between scripts and blocks is that the |
562 | concept of scripts is closer to natural languages, while the concept |
563 | of blocks is more of an artificial grouping based on groups of 256 |
376d9008 |
564 | Unicode characters. For example, the C<Latin> script contains letters |
1bfb14c4 |
565 | from many blocks but does not contain all the characters from those |
376d9008 |
566 | blocks. It does not, for example, contain digits, because digits are |
567 | shared across many scripts. Digits and similar groups, like |
568 | punctuation, are in a category called C<Common>. |
2796c109 |
569 | |
8158862b |
570 | For more about scripts, see the UAX#24 "Script Names": |
cfc01aea |
571 | |
8158862b |
572 | http://www.unicode.org/reports/tr24/ |
cfc01aea |
573 | |
574 | For more about blocks, see: |
575 | |
576 | http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt |
2796c109 |
577 | |
376d9008 |
578 | Block names are given with the C<In> prefix. For example, the |
579 | Katakana block is referenced via C<\p{InKatakana}>. The C<In> |
7eabb34d |
580 | prefix may be omitted if there is no naming conflict with a script |
eb0cc9e3 |
581 | or any other property, but it is recommended that C<In> always be used |
1bfb14c4 |
582 | for block tests to avoid confusion. |
eb0cc9e3 |
583 | |
584 | These block names are supported: |
585 | |
8158862b |
586 | InAegeanNumbers |
1d81abf3 |
587 | InAlphabeticPresentationForms |
8158862b |
588 | InAncientGreekMusicalNotation |
589 | InAncientGreekNumbers |
1d81abf3 |
590 | InArabic |
591 | InArabicPresentationFormsA |
592 | InArabicPresentationFormsB |
8158862b |
593 | InArabicSupplement |
1d81abf3 |
594 | InArmenian |
595 | InArrows |
8158862b |
596 | InBalinese |
1d81abf3 |
597 | InBasicLatin |
598 | InBengali |
599 | InBlockElements |
600 | InBopomofo |
601 | InBopomofoExtended |
602 | InBoxDrawing |
603 | InBraillePatterns |
8158862b |
604 | InBuginese |
1d81abf3 |
605 | InBuhid |
606 | InByzantineMusicalSymbols |
607 | InCJKCompatibility |
608 | InCJKCompatibilityForms |
609 | InCJKCompatibilityIdeographs |
610 | InCJKCompatibilityIdeographsSupplement |
611 | InCJKRadicalsSupplement |
8158862b |
612 | InCJKStrokes |
1d81abf3 |
613 | InCJKSymbolsAndPunctuation |
614 | InCJKUnifiedIdeographs |
615 | InCJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionA |
616 | InCJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionB |
617 | InCherokee |
618 | InCombiningDiacriticalMarks |
8158862b |
619 | InCombiningDiacriticalMarksSupplement |
1d81abf3 |
620 | InCombiningDiacriticalMarksforSymbols |
621 | InCombiningHalfMarks |
622 | InControlPictures |
8158862b |
623 | InCoptic |
624 | InCountingRodNumerals |
625 | InCuneiform |
626 | InCuneiformNumbersAndPunctuation |
1d81abf3 |
627 | InCurrencySymbols |
8158862b |
628 | InCypriotSyllabary |
1d81abf3 |
629 | InCyrillic |
8158862b |
630 | InCyrillicSupplement |
1d81abf3 |
631 | InDeseret |
632 | InDevanagari |
633 | InDingbats |
634 | InEnclosedAlphanumerics |
635 | InEnclosedCJKLettersAndMonths |
636 | InEthiopic |
8158862b |
637 | InEthiopicExtended |
638 | InEthiopicSupplement |
1d81abf3 |
639 | InGeneralPunctuation |
640 | InGeometricShapes |
641 | InGeorgian |
8158862b |
642 | InGeorgianSupplement |
643 | InGlagolitic |
1d81abf3 |
644 | InGothic |
645 | InGreekExtended |
646 | InGreekAndCoptic |
647 | InGujarati |
648 | InGurmukhi |
649 | InHalfwidthAndFullwidthForms |
650 | InHangulCompatibilityJamo |
651 | InHangulJamo |
652 | InHangulSyllables |
653 | InHanunoo |
654 | InHebrew |
655 | InHighPrivateUseSurrogates |
656 | InHighSurrogates |
657 | InHiragana |
658 | InIPAExtensions |
659 | InIdeographicDescriptionCharacters |
660 | InKanbun |
661 | InKangxiRadicals |
662 | InKannada |
663 | InKatakana |
664 | InKatakanaPhoneticExtensions |
8158862b |
665 | InKharoshthi |
1d81abf3 |
666 | InKhmer |
8158862b |
667 | InKhmerSymbols |
1d81abf3 |
668 | InLao |
669 | InLatin1Supplement |
670 | InLatinExtendedA |
671 | InLatinExtendedAdditional |
672 | InLatinExtendedB |
8158862b |
673 | InLatinExtendedC |
674 | InLatinExtendedD |
1d81abf3 |
675 | InLetterlikeSymbols |
8158862b |
676 | InLimbu |
677 | InLinearBIdeograms |
678 | InLinearBSyllabary |
1d81abf3 |
679 | InLowSurrogates |
680 | InMalayalam |
681 | InMathematicalAlphanumericSymbols |
682 | InMathematicalOperators |
683 | InMiscellaneousMathematicalSymbolsA |
684 | InMiscellaneousMathematicalSymbolsB |
685 | InMiscellaneousSymbols |
8158862b |
686 | InMiscellaneousSymbolsAndArrows |
1d81abf3 |
687 | InMiscellaneousTechnical |
8158862b |
688 | InModifierToneLetters |
1d81abf3 |
689 | InMongolian |
690 | InMusicalSymbols |
691 | InMyanmar |
8158862b |
692 | InNKo |
693 | InNewTaiLue |
1d81abf3 |
694 | InNumberForms |
695 | InOgham |
696 | InOldItalic |
8158862b |
697 | InOldPersian |
1d81abf3 |
698 | InOpticalCharacterRecognition |
699 | InOriya |
8158862b |
700 | InOsmanya |
701 | InPhagspa |
702 | InPhoenician |
703 | InPhoneticExtensions |
704 | InPhoneticExtensionsSupplement |
1d81abf3 |
705 | InPrivateUseArea |
706 | InRunic |
8158862b |
707 | InShavian |
1d81abf3 |
708 | InSinhala |
709 | InSmallFormVariants |
710 | InSpacingModifierLetters |
711 | InSpecials |
712 | InSuperscriptsAndSubscripts |
713 | InSupplementalArrowsA |
714 | InSupplementalArrowsB |
715 | InSupplementalMathematicalOperators |
8158862b |
716 | InSupplementalPunctuation |
1d81abf3 |
717 | InSupplementaryPrivateUseAreaA |
718 | InSupplementaryPrivateUseAreaB |
8158862b |
719 | InSylotiNagri |
1d81abf3 |
720 | InSyriac |
721 | InTagalog |
722 | InTagbanwa |
723 | InTags |
8158862b |
724 | InTaiLe |
725 | InTaiXuanJingSymbols |
1d81abf3 |
726 | InTamil |
727 | InTelugu |
728 | InThaana |
729 | InThai |
730 | InTibetan |
8158862b |
731 | InTifinagh |
732 | InUgaritic |
1d81abf3 |
733 | InUnifiedCanadianAboriginalSyllabics |
734 | InVariationSelectors |
8158862b |
735 | InVariationSelectorsSupplement |
736 | InVerticalForms |
1d81abf3 |
737 | InYiRadicals |
738 | InYiSyllables |
8158862b |
739 | InYijingHexagramSymbols |
32293815 |
740 | |
393fec97 |
741 | =back |
742 | |
376d9008 |
743 | =head2 User-Defined Character Properties |
491fd90a |
744 | |
745 | You can define your own character properties by defining subroutines |
bac0b425 |
746 | whose names begin with "In" or "Is". The subroutines can be defined in |
747 | any package. The user-defined properties can be used in the regular |
748 | expression C<\p> and C<\P> constructs; if you are using a user-defined |
749 | property from a package other than the one you are in, you must specify |
750 | its package in the C<\p> or C<\P> construct. |
751 | |
752 | # assuming property IsForeign defined in Lang:: |
753 | package main; # property package name required |
754 | if ($txt =~ /\p{Lang::IsForeign}+/) { ... } |
755 | |
756 | package Lang; # property package name not required |
757 | if ($txt =~ /\p{IsForeign}+/) { ... } |
758 | |
759 | |
760 | Note that the effect is compile-time and immutable once defined. |
491fd90a |
761 | |
376d9008 |
762 | The subroutines must return a specially-formatted string, with one |
763 | or more newline-separated lines. Each line must be one of the following: |
491fd90a |
764 | |
765 | =over 4 |
766 | |
767 | =item * |
768 | |
99a6b1f0 |
769 | Two hexadecimal numbers separated by horizontal whitespace (space or |
376d9008 |
770 | tabular characters) denoting a range of Unicode code points to include. |
491fd90a |
771 | |
772 | =item * |
773 | |
376d9008 |
774 | Something to include, prefixed by "+": a built-in character |
bac0b425 |
775 | property (prefixed by "utf8::") or a user-defined character property, |
776 | to represent all the characters in that property; two hexadecimal code |
777 | points for a range; or a single hexadecimal code point. |
491fd90a |
778 | |
779 | =item * |
780 | |
376d9008 |
781 | Something to exclude, prefixed by "-": an existing character |
bac0b425 |
782 | property (prefixed by "utf8::") or a user-defined character property, |
783 | to represent all the characters in that property; two hexadecimal code |
784 | points for a range; or a single hexadecimal code point. |
491fd90a |
785 | |
786 | =item * |
787 | |
376d9008 |
788 | Something to negate, prefixed "!": an existing character |
bac0b425 |
789 | property (prefixed by "utf8::") or a user-defined character property, |
790 | to represent all the characters in that property; two hexadecimal code |
791 | points for a range; or a single hexadecimal code point. |
792 | |
793 | =item * |
794 | |
795 | Something to intersect with, prefixed by "&": an existing character |
796 | property (prefixed by "utf8::") or a user-defined character property, |
797 | for all the characters except the characters in the property; two |
798 | hexadecimal code points for a range; or a single hexadecimal code point. |
491fd90a |
799 | |
800 | =back |
801 | |
802 | For example, to define a property that covers both the Japanese |
803 | syllabaries (hiragana and katakana), you can define |
804 | |
805 | sub InKana { |
d5822f25 |
806 | return <<END; |
807 | 3040\t309F |
808 | 30A0\t30FF |
491fd90a |
809 | END |
810 | } |
811 | |
d5822f25 |
812 | Imagine that the here-doc end marker is at the beginning of the line. |
813 | Now you can use C<\p{InKana}> and C<\P{InKana}>. |
491fd90a |
814 | |
815 | You could also have used the existing block property names: |
816 | |
817 | sub InKana { |
818 | return <<'END'; |
819 | +utf8::InHiragana |
820 | +utf8::InKatakana |
821 | END |
822 | } |
823 | |
824 | Suppose you wanted to match only the allocated characters, |
d5822f25 |
825 | not the raw block ranges: in other words, you want to remove |
491fd90a |
826 | the non-characters: |
827 | |
828 | sub InKana { |
829 | return <<'END'; |
830 | +utf8::InHiragana |
831 | +utf8::InKatakana |
832 | -utf8::IsCn |
833 | END |
834 | } |
835 | |
836 | The negation is useful for defining (surprise!) negated classes. |
837 | |
838 | sub InNotKana { |
839 | return <<'END'; |
840 | !utf8::InHiragana |
841 | -utf8::InKatakana |
842 | +utf8::IsCn |
843 | END |
844 | } |
845 | |
bac0b425 |
846 | Intersection is useful for getting the common characters matched by |
847 | two (or more) classes. |
848 | |
849 | sub InFooAndBar { |
850 | return <<'END'; |
851 | +main::Foo |
852 | &main::Bar |
853 | END |
854 | } |
855 | |
856 | It's important to remember not to use "&" for the first set -- that |
857 | would be intersecting with nothing (resulting in an empty set). |
858 | |
822502e5 |
859 | A final note on the user-defined property tests: they will be used |
860 | only if the scalar has been marked as having Unicode characters. |
861 | Old byte-style strings will not be affected. |
862 | |
863 | =head2 User-Defined Case Mappings |
864 | |
3a2263fe |
865 | You can also define your own mappings to be used in the lc(), |
866 | lcfirst(), uc(), and ucfirst() (or their string-inlined versions). |
822502e5 |
867 | The principle is similar to that of user-defined character |
868 | properties: to define subroutines in the C<main> package |
3a2263fe |
869 | with names like C<ToLower> (for lc() and lcfirst()), C<ToTitle> (for |
870 | the first character in ucfirst()), and C<ToUpper> (for uc(), and the |
871 | rest of the characters in ucfirst()). |
872 | |
873 | The string returned by the subroutines needs now to be three |
874 | hexadecimal numbers separated by tabulators: start of the source |
875 | range, end of the source range, and start of the destination range. |
876 | For example: |
877 | |
878 | sub ToUpper { |
879 | return <<END; |
880 | 0061\t0063\t0041 |
881 | END |
882 | } |
883 | |
884 | defines an uc() mapping that causes only the characters "a", "b", and |
885 | "c" to be mapped to "A", "B", "C", all other characters will remain |
886 | unchanged. |
887 | |
888 | If there is no source range to speak of, that is, the mapping is from |
889 | a single character to another single character, leave the end of the |
890 | source range empty, but the two tabulator characters are still needed. |
891 | For example: |
892 | |
893 | sub ToLower { |
894 | return <<END; |
895 | 0041\t\t0061 |
896 | END |
897 | } |
898 | |
899 | defines a lc() mapping that causes only "A" to be mapped to "a", all |
900 | other characters will remain unchanged. |
901 | |
902 | (For serious hackers only) If you want to introspect the default |
903 | mappings, you can find the data in the directory |
904 | C<$Config{privlib}>/F<unicore/To/>. The mapping data is returned as |
905 | the here-document, and the C<utf8::ToSpecFoo> are special exception |
906 | mappings derived from <$Config{privlib}>/F<unicore/SpecialCasing.txt>. |
907 | The C<Digit> and C<Fold> mappings that one can see in the directory |
908 | are not directly user-accessible, one can use either the |
909 | C<Unicode::UCD> module, or just match case-insensitively (that's when |
910 | the C<Fold> mapping is used). |
911 | |
822502e5 |
912 | A final note on the user-defined case mappings: they will be used |
913 | only if the scalar has been marked as having Unicode characters. |
914 | Old byte-style strings will not be affected. |
3a2263fe |
915 | |
376d9008 |
916 | =head2 Character Encodings for Input and Output |
8cbd9a7a |
917 | |
7221edc9 |
918 | See L<Encode>. |
8cbd9a7a |
919 | |
c29a771d |
920 | =head2 Unicode Regular Expression Support Level |
776f8809 |
921 | |
376d9008 |
922 | The following list of Unicode support for regular expressions describes |
923 | all the features currently supported. The references to "Level N" |
8158862b |
924 | and the section numbers refer to the Unicode Technical Standard #18, |
925 | "Unicode Regular Expressions", version 11, in May 2005. |
776f8809 |
926 | |
927 | =over 4 |
928 | |
929 | =item * |
930 | |
931 | Level 1 - Basic Unicode Support |
932 | |
8158862b |
933 | RL1.1 Hex Notation - done [1] |
934 | RL1.2 Properties - done [2][3] |
935 | RL1.2a Compatibility Properties - done [4] |
936 | RL1.3 Subtraction and Intersection - MISSING [5] |
937 | RL1.4 Simple Word Boundaries - done [6] |
938 | RL1.5 Simple Loose Matches - done [7] |
939 | RL1.6 Line Boundaries - MISSING [8] |
940 | RL1.7 Supplementary Code Points - done [9] |
941 | |
942 | [1] \x{...} |
943 | [2] \p{...} \P{...} |
944 | [3] supports not only minimal list (general category, scripts, |
945 | Alphabetic, Lowercase, Uppercase, WhiteSpace, |
946 | NoncharacterCodePoint, DefaultIgnorableCodePoint, Any, |
947 | ASCII, Assigned), but also bidirectional types, blocks, etc. |
948 | (see L</"Unicode Character Properties">) |
949 | [4] \d \D \s \S \w \W \X [:prop:] [:^prop:] |
950 | [5] can use regular expression look-ahead [a] or |
951 | user-defined character properties [b] to emulate set operations |
952 | [6] \b \B |
953 | [7] note that Perl does Full case-folding in matching, not Simple: |
835863de |
954 | for example U+1F88 is equivalent with U+1F00 U+03B9, |
e0f9d4a8 |
955 | not with 1F80. This difference matters for certain Greek |
376d9008 |
956 | capital letters with certain modifiers: the Full case-folding |
957 | decomposes the letter, while the Simple case-folding would map |
e0f9d4a8 |
958 | it to a single character. |
8158862b |
959 | [8] should do ^ and $ also on U+000B (\v in C), FF (\f), CR (\r), |
960 | CRLF (\r\n), NEL (U+0085), LS (U+2028), and PS (U+2029); |
961 | should also affect <>, $., and script line numbers; |
962 | should not split lines within CRLF [c] (i.e. there is no empty |
963 | line between \r and \n) |
964 | [9] UTF-8/UTF-EBDDIC used in perl allows not only U+10000 to U+10FFFF |
965 | but also beyond U+10FFFF [d] |
7207e29d |
966 | |
237bad5b |
967 | [a] You can mimic class subtraction using lookahead. |
8158862b |
968 | For example, what UTS#18 might write as |
29bdacb8 |
969 | |
dbe420b4 |
970 | [{Greek}-[{UNASSIGNED}]] |
971 | |
972 | in Perl can be written as: |
973 | |
1d81abf3 |
974 | (?!\p{Unassigned})\p{InGreekAndCoptic} |
975 | (?=\p{Assigned})\p{InGreekAndCoptic} |
dbe420b4 |
976 | |
977 | But in this particular example, you probably really want |
978 | |
1bfb14c4 |
979 | \p{GreekAndCoptic} |
dbe420b4 |
980 | |
981 | which will match assigned characters known to be part of the Greek script. |
29bdacb8 |
982 | |
5ca1ac52 |
983 | Also see the Unicode::Regex::Set module, it does implement the full |
8158862b |
984 | UTS#18 grouping, intersection, union, and removal (subtraction) syntax. |
985 | |
986 | [b] '+' for union, '-' for removal (set-difference), '&' for intersection |
987 | (see L</"User-Defined Character Properties">) |
988 | |
989 | [c] Try the C<:crlf> layer (see L<PerlIO>). |
5ca1ac52 |
990 | |
8158862b |
991 | [d] Avoid C<use warning 'utf8';> (or say C<no warning 'utf8';>) to allow |
992 | U+FFFF (C<\x{FFFF}>). |
237bad5b |
993 | |
776f8809 |
994 | =item * |
995 | |
996 | Level 2 - Extended Unicode Support |
997 | |
8158862b |
998 | RL2.1 Canonical Equivalents - MISSING [10][11] |
999 | RL2.2 Default Grapheme Clusters - MISSING [12][13] |
1000 | RL2.3 Default Word Boundaries - MISSING [14] |
1001 | RL2.4 Default Loose Matches - MISSING [15] |
1002 | RL2.5 Name Properties - MISSING [16] |
1003 | RL2.6 Wildcard Properties - MISSING |
1004 | |
1005 | [10] see UAX#15 "Unicode Normalization Forms" |
1006 | [11] have Unicode::Normalize but not integrated to regexes |
1007 | [12] have \X but at this level . should equal that |
1008 | [13] UAX#29 "Text Boundaries" considers CRLF and Hangul syllable |
1009 | clusters as a single grapheme cluster. |
1010 | [14] see UAX#29, Word Boundaries |
1011 | [15] see UAX#21 "Case Mappings" |
1012 | [16] have \N{...} but neither compute names of CJK Ideographs |
1013 | and Hangul Syllables nor use a loose match [e] |
1014 | |
1015 | [e] C<\N{...}> allows namespaces (see L<charnames>). |
776f8809 |
1016 | |
1017 | =item * |
1018 | |
8158862b |
1019 | Level 3 - Tailored Support |
1020 | |
1021 | RL3.1 Tailored Punctuation - MISSING |
1022 | RL3.2 Tailored Grapheme Clusters - MISSING [17][18] |
1023 | RL3.3 Tailored Word Boundaries - MISSING |
1024 | RL3.4 Tailored Loose Matches - MISSING |
1025 | RL3.5 Tailored Ranges - MISSING |
1026 | RL3.6 Context Matching - MISSING [19] |
1027 | RL3.7 Incremental Matches - MISSING |
1028 | ( RL3.8 Unicode Set Sharing ) |
1029 | RL3.9 Possible Match Sets - MISSING |
1030 | RL3.10 Folded Matching - MISSING [20] |
1031 | RL3.11 Submatchers - MISSING |
1032 | |
1033 | [17] see UAX#10 "Unicode Collation Algorithms" |
1034 | [18] have Unicode::Collate but not integrated to regexes |
1035 | [19] have (?<=x) and (?=x), but look-aheads or look-behinds should see |
1036 | outside of the target substring |
1037 | [20] need insensitive matching for linguistic features other than case; |
1038 | for example, hiragana to katakana, wide and narrow, simplified Han |
1039 | to traditional Han (see UTR#30 "Character Foldings") |
776f8809 |
1040 | |
1041 | =back |
1042 | |
c349b1b9 |
1043 | =head2 Unicode Encodings |
1044 | |
376d9008 |
1045 | Unicode characters are assigned to I<code points>, which are abstract |
1046 | numbers. To use these numbers, various encodings are needed. |
c349b1b9 |
1047 | |
1048 | =over 4 |
1049 | |
c29a771d |
1050 | =item * |
5cb3728c |
1051 | |
1052 | UTF-8 |
c349b1b9 |
1053 | |
3e4dbfed |
1054 | UTF-8 is a variable-length (1 to 6 bytes, current character allocations |
376d9008 |
1055 | require 4 bytes), byte-order independent encoding. For ASCII (and we |
1056 | really do mean 7-bit ASCII, not another 8-bit encoding), UTF-8 is |
1057 | transparent. |
c349b1b9 |
1058 | |
8c007b5a |
1059 | The following table is from Unicode 3.2. |
05632f9a |
1060 | |
1061 | Code Points 1st Byte 2nd Byte 3rd Byte 4th Byte |
1062 | |
8c007b5a |
1063 | U+0000..U+007F 00..7F |
1064 | U+0080..U+07FF C2..DF 80..BF |
ec90690f |
1065 | U+0800..U+0FFF E0 A0..BF 80..BF |
1066 | U+1000..U+CFFF E1..EC 80..BF 80..BF |
1067 | U+D000..U+D7FF ED 80..9F 80..BF |
8c007b5a |
1068 | U+D800..U+DFFF ******* ill-formed ******* |
ec90690f |
1069 | U+E000..U+FFFF EE..EF 80..BF 80..BF |
05632f9a |
1070 | U+10000..U+3FFFF F0 90..BF 80..BF 80..BF |
1071 | U+40000..U+FFFFF F1..F3 80..BF 80..BF 80..BF |
1072 | U+100000..U+10FFFF F4 80..8F 80..BF 80..BF |
1073 | |
376d9008 |
1074 | Note the C<A0..BF> in C<U+0800..U+0FFF>, the C<80..9F> in |
1075 | C<U+D000...U+D7FF>, the C<90..B>F in C<U+10000..U+3FFFF>, and the |
1076 | C<80...8F> in C<U+100000..U+10FFFF>. The "gaps" are caused by legal |
1077 | UTF-8 avoiding non-shortest encodings: it is technically possible to |
1078 | UTF-8-encode a single code point in different ways, but that is |
1079 | explicitly forbidden, and the shortest possible encoding should always |
1080 | be used. So that's what Perl does. |
37361303 |
1081 | |
376d9008 |
1082 | Another way to look at it is via bits: |
05632f9a |
1083 | |
1084 | Code Points 1st Byte 2nd Byte 3rd Byte 4th Byte |
1085 | |
1086 | 0aaaaaaa 0aaaaaaa |
1087 | 00000bbbbbaaaaaa 110bbbbb 10aaaaaa |
1088 | ccccbbbbbbaaaaaa 1110cccc 10bbbbbb 10aaaaaa |
1089 | 00000dddccccccbbbbbbaaaaaa 11110ddd 10cccccc 10bbbbbb 10aaaaaa |
1090 | |
1091 | As you can see, the continuation bytes all begin with C<10>, and the |
8c007b5a |
1092 | leading bits of the start byte tell how many bytes the are in the |
05632f9a |
1093 | encoded character. |
1094 | |
c29a771d |
1095 | =item * |
5cb3728c |
1096 | |
1097 | UTF-EBCDIC |
dbe420b4 |
1098 | |
376d9008 |
1099 | Like UTF-8 but EBCDIC-safe, in the way that UTF-8 is ASCII-safe. |
dbe420b4 |
1100 | |
c29a771d |
1101 | =item * |
5cb3728c |
1102 | |
1e54db1a |
1103 | UTF-16, UTF-16BE, UTF-16LE, Surrogates, and BOMs (Byte Order Marks) |
c349b1b9 |
1104 | |
1bfb14c4 |
1105 | The followings items are mostly for reference and general Unicode |
1106 | knowledge, Perl doesn't use these constructs internally. |
dbe420b4 |
1107 | |
c349b1b9 |
1108 | UTF-16 is a 2 or 4 byte encoding. The Unicode code points |
1bfb14c4 |
1109 | C<U+0000..U+FFFF> are stored in a single 16-bit unit, and the code |
1110 | points C<U+10000..U+10FFFF> in two 16-bit units. The latter case is |
c349b1b9 |
1111 | using I<surrogates>, the first 16-bit unit being the I<high |
1112 | surrogate>, and the second being the I<low surrogate>. |
1113 | |
376d9008 |
1114 | Surrogates are code points set aside to encode the C<U+10000..U+10FFFF> |
c349b1b9 |
1115 | range of Unicode code points in pairs of 16-bit units. The I<high |
376d9008 |
1116 | surrogates> are the range C<U+D800..U+DBFF>, and the I<low surrogates> |
1117 | are the range C<U+DC00..U+DFFF>. The surrogate encoding is |
c349b1b9 |
1118 | |
1119 | $hi = ($uni - 0x10000) / 0x400 + 0xD800; |
1120 | $lo = ($uni - 0x10000) % 0x400 + 0xDC00; |
1121 | |
1122 | and the decoding is |
1123 | |
1a3fa709 |
1124 | $uni = 0x10000 + ($hi - 0xD800) * 0x400 + ($lo - 0xDC00); |
c349b1b9 |
1125 | |
feda178f |
1126 | If you try to generate surrogates (for example by using chr()), you |
376d9008 |
1127 | will get a warning if warnings are turned on, because those code |
1128 | points are not valid for a Unicode character. |
9466bab6 |
1129 | |
376d9008 |
1130 | Because of the 16-bitness, UTF-16 is byte-order dependent. UTF-16 |
c349b1b9 |
1131 | itself can be used for in-memory computations, but if storage or |
376d9008 |
1132 | transfer is required either UTF-16BE (big-endian) or UTF-16LE |
1133 | (little-endian) encodings must be chosen. |
c349b1b9 |
1134 | |
1135 | This introduces another problem: what if you just know that your data |
376d9008 |
1136 | is UTF-16, but you don't know which endianness? Byte Order Marks, or |
1137 | BOMs, are a solution to this. A special character has been reserved |
86bbd6d1 |
1138 | in Unicode to function as a byte order marker: the character with the |
376d9008 |
1139 | code point C<U+FEFF> is the BOM. |
042da322 |
1140 | |
c349b1b9 |
1141 | The trick is that if you read a BOM, you will know the byte order, |
376d9008 |
1142 | since if it was written on a big-endian platform, you will read the |
1143 | bytes C<0xFE 0xFF>, but if it was written on a little-endian platform, |
1144 | you will read the bytes C<0xFF 0xFE>. (And if the originating platform |
1145 | was writing in UTF-8, you will read the bytes C<0xEF 0xBB 0xBF>.) |
042da322 |
1146 | |
86bbd6d1 |
1147 | The way this trick works is that the character with the code point |
376d9008 |
1148 | C<U+FFFE> is guaranteed not to be a valid Unicode character, so the |
1149 | sequence of bytes C<0xFF 0xFE> is unambiguously "BOM, represented in |
1bfb14c4 |
1150 | little-endian format" and cannot be C<U+FFFE>, represented in big-endian |
042da322 |
1151 | format". |
c349b1b9 |
1152 | |
c29a771d |
1153 | =item * |
5cb3728c |
1154 | |
1e54db1a |
1155 | UTF-32, UTF-32BE, UTF-32LE |
c349b1b9 |
1156 | |
1157 | The UTF-32 family is pretty much like the UTF-16 family, expect that |
042da322 |
1158 | the units are 32-bit, and therefore the surrogate scheme is not |
376d9008 |
1159 | needed. The BOM signatures will be C<0x00 0x00 0xFE 0xFF> for BE and |
1160 | C<0xFF 0xFE 0x00 0x00> for LE. |
c349b1b9 |
1161 | |
c29a771d |
1162 | =item * |
5cb3728c |
1163 | |
1164 | UCS-2, UCS-4 |
c349b1b9 |
1165 | |
86bbd6d1 |
1166 | Encodings defined by the ISO 10646 standard. UCS-2 is a 16-bit |
376d9008 |
1167 | encoding. Unlike UTF-16, UCS-2 is not extensible beyond C<U+FFFF>, |
339cfa0e |
1168 | because it does not use surrogates. UCS-4 is a 32-bit encoding, |
1169 | functionally identical to UTF-32. |
c349b1b9 |
1170 | |
c29a771d |
1171 | =item * |
5cb3728c |
1172 | |
1173 | UTF-7 |
c349b1b9 |
1174 | |
376d9008 |
1175 | A seven-bit safe (non-eight-bit) encoding, which is useful if the |
1176 | transport or storage is not eight-bit safe. Defined by RFC 2152. |
c349b1b9 |
1177 | |
95a1a48b |
1178 | =back |
1179 | |
0d7c09bb |
1180 | =head2 Security Implications of Unicode |
1181 | |
1182 | =over 4 |
1183 | |
1184 | =item * |
1185 | |
1186 | Malformed UTF-8 |
bf0fa0b2 |
1187 | |
1188 | Unfortunately, the specification of UTF-8 leaves some room for |
1189 | interpretation of how many bytes of encoded output one should generate |
376d9008 |
1190 | from one input Unicode character. Strictly speaking, the shortest |
1191 | possible sequence of UTF-8 bytes should be generated, |
1192 | because otherwise there is potential for an input buffer overflow at |
feda178f |
1193 | the receiving end of a UTF-8 connection. Perl always generates the |
376d9008 |
1194 | shortest length UTF-8, and with warnings on Perl will warn about |
1195 | non-shortest length UTF-8 along with other malformations, such as the |
1196 | surrogates, which are not real Unicode code points. |
bf0fa0b2 |
1197 | |
0d7c09bb |
1198 | =item * |
1199 | |
1200 | Regular expressions behave slightly differently between byte data and |
376d9008 |
1201 | character (Unicode) data. For example, the "word character" character |
1202 | class C<\w> will work differently depending on if data is eight-bit bytes |
1203 | or Unicode. |
0d7c09bb |
1204 | |
376d9008 |
1205 | In the first case, the set of C<\w> characters is either small--the |
1206 | default set of alphabetic characters, digits, and the "_"--or, if you |
0d7c09bb |
1207 | are using a locale (see L<perllocale>), the C<\w> might contain a few |
1208 | more letters according to your language and country. |
1209 | |
376d9008 |
1210 | In the second case, the C<\w> set of characters is much, much larger. |
1bfb14c4 |
1211 | Most importantly, even in the set of the first 256 characters, it will |
1212 | probably match different characters: unlike most locales, which are |
1213 | specific to a language and country pair, Unicode classifies all the |
1214 | characters that are letters I<somewhere> as C<\w>. For example, your |
1215 | locale might not think that LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH is a letter (unless |
1216 | you happen to speak Icelandic), but Unicode does. |
0d7c09bb |
1217 | |
376d9008 |
1218 | As discussed elsewhere, Perl has one foot (two hooves?) planted in |
1bfb14c4 |
1219 | each of two worlds: the old world of bytes and the new world of |
1220 | characters, upgrading from bytes to characters when necessary. |
376d9008 |
1221 | If your legacy code does not explicitly use Unicode, no automatic |
1222 | switch-over to characters should happen. Characters shouldn't get |
1bfb14c4 |
1223 | downgraded to bytes, either. It is possible to accidentally mix bytes |
1224 | and characters, however (see L<perluniintro>), in which case C<\w> in |
1225 | regular expressions might start behaving differently. Review your |
1226 | code. Use warnings and the C<strict> pragma. |
0d7c09bb |
1227 | |
1228 | =back |
1229 | |
c349b1b9 |
1230 | =head2 Unicode in Perl on EBCDIC |
1231 | |
376d9008 |
1232 | The way Unicode is handled on EBCDIC platforms is still |
1233 | experimental. On such platforms, references to UTF-8 encoding in this |
1234 | document and elsewhere should be read as meaning the UTF-EBCDIC |
1235 | specified in Unicode Technical Report 16, unless ASCII vs. EBCDIC issues |
c349b1b9 |
1236 | are specifically discussed. There is no C<utfebcdic> pragma or |
376d9008 |
1237 | ":utfebcdic" layer; rather, "utf8" and ":utf8" are reused to mean |
86bbd6d1 |
1238 | the platform's "natural" 8-bit encoding of Unicode. See L<perlebcdic> |
1239 | for more discussion of the issues. |
c349b1b9 |
1240 | |
b310b053 |
1241 | =head2 Locales |
1242 | |
4616122b |
1243 | Usually locale settings and Unicode do not affect each other, but |
b310b053 |
1244 | there are a couple of exceptions: |
1245 | |
1246 | =over 4 |
1247 | |
1248 | =item * |
1249 | |
8aa8f774 |
1250 | You can enable automatic UTF-8-ification of your standard file |
1251 | handles, default C<open()> layer, and C<@ARGV> by using either |
1252 | the C<-C> command line switch or the C<PERL_UNICODE> environment |
1253 | variable, see L<perlrun> for the documentation of the C<-C> switch. |
b310b053 |
1254 | |
1255 | =item * |
1256 | |
376d9008 |
1257 | Perl tries really hard to work both with Unicode and the old |
1258 | byte-oriented world. Most often this is nice, but sometimes Perl's |
1259 | straddling of the proverbial fence causes problems. |
b310b053 |
1260 | |
1261 | =back |
1262 | |
1aad1664 |
1263 | =head2 When Unicode Does Not Happen |
1264 | |
1265 | While Perl does have extensive ways to input and output in Unicode, |
1266 | and few other 'entry points' like the @ARGV which can be interpreted |
1267 | as Unicode (UTF-8), there still are many places where Unicode (in some |
1268 | encoding or another) could be given as arguments or received as |
1269 | results, or both, but it is not. |
1270 | |
6cd4dd6c |
1271 | The following are such interfaces. For all of these interfaces Perl |
1272 | currently (as of 5.8.3) simply assumes byte strings both as arguments |
1273 | and results, or UTF-8 strings if the C<encoding> pragma has been used. |
1aad1664 |
1274 | |
1275 | One reason why Perl does not attempt to resolve the role of Unicode in |
1276 | this cases is that the answers are highly dependent on the operating |
1277 | system and the file system(s). For example, whether filenames can be |
1278 | in Unicode, and in exactly what kind of encoding, is not exactly a |
1279 | portable concept. Similarly for the qx and system: how well will the |
1280 | 'command line interface' (and which of them?) handle Unicode? |
1281 | |
1282 | =over 4 |
1283 | |
557a2462 |
1284 | =item * |
1285 | |
254c2b64 |
1286 | chdir, chmod, chown, chroot, exec, link, lstat, mkdir, |
1e8e8236 |
1287 | rename, rmdir, stat, symlink, truncate, unlink, utime, -X |
557a2462 |
1288 | |
1289 | =item * |
1290 | |
1291 | %ENV |
1292 | |
1293 | =item * |
1294 | |
1295 | glob (aka the <*>) |
1296 | |
1297 | =item * |
1aad1664 |
1298 | |
557a2462 |
1299 | open, opendir, sysopen |
1aad1664 |
1300 | |
557a2462 |
1301 | =item * |
1aad1664 |
1302 | |
557a2462 |
1303 | qx (aka the backtick operator), system |
1aad1664 |
1304 | |
557a2462 |
1305 | =item * |
1aad1664 |
1306 | |
557a2462 |
1307 | readdir, readlink |
1aad1664 |
1308 | |
1309 | =back |
1310 | |
1311 | =head2 Forcing Unicode in Perl (Or Unforcing Unicode in Perl) |
1312 | |
1313 | Sometimes (see L</"When Unicode Does Not Happen">) there are |
1314 | situations where you simply need to force Perl to believe that a byte |
1315 | string is UTF-8, or vice versa. The low-level calls |
1316 | utf8::upgrade($bytestring) and utf8::downgrade($utf8string) are |
1317 | the answers. |
1318 | |
1319 | Do not use them without careful thought, though: Perl may easily get |
1320 | very confused, angry, or even crash, if you suddenly change the 'nature' |
1321 | of scalar like that. Especially careful you have to be if you use the |
1322 | utf8::upgrade(): any random byte string is not valid UTF-8. |
1323 | |
95a1a48b |
1324 | =head2 Using Unicode in XS |
1325 | |
3a2263fe |
1326 | If you want to handle Perl Unicode in XS extensions, you may find the |
1327 | following C APIs useful. See also L<perlguts/"Unicode Support"> for an |
1328 | explanation about Unicode at the XS level, and L<perlapi> for the API |
1329 | details. |
95a1a48b |
1330 | |
1331 | =over 4 |
1332 | |
1333 | =item * |
1334 | |
1bfb14c4 |
1335 | C<DO_UTF8(sv)> returns true if the C<UTF8> flag is on and the bytes |
1336 | pragma is not in effect. C<SvUTF8(sv)> returns true is the C<UTF8> |
1337 | flag is on; the bytes pragma is ignored. The C<UTF8> flag being on |
1338 | does B<not> mean that there are any characters of code points greater |
1339 | than 255 (or 127) in the scalar or that there are even any characters |
1340 | in the scalar. What the C<UTF8> flag means is that the sequence of |
1341 | octets in the representation of the scalar is the sequence of UTF-8 |
1342 | encoded code points of the characters of a string. The C<UTF8> flag |
1343 | being off means that each octet in this representation encodes a |
1344 | single character with code point 0..255 within the string. Perl's |
1345 | Unicode model is not to use UTF-8 until it is absolutely necessary. |
95a1a48b |
1346 | |
1347 | =item * |
1348 | |
fb9cc174 |
1349 | C<uvuni_to_utf8(buf, chr)> writes a Unicode character code point into |
1bfb14c4 |
1350 | a buffer encoding the code point as UTF-8, and returns a pointer |
95a1a48b |
1351 | pointing after the UTF-8 bytes. |
1352 | |
1353 | =item * |
1354 | |
376d9008 |
1355 | C<utf8_to_uvuni(buf, lenp)> reads UTF-8 encoded bytes from a buffer and |
1356 | returns the Unicode character code point and, optionally, the length of |
1357 | the UTF-8 byte sequence. |
95a1a48b |
1358 | |
1359 | =item * |
1360 | |
376d9008 |
1361 | C<utf8_length(start, end)> returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded buffer |
1362 | in characters. C<sv_len_utf8(sv)> returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded |
95a1a48b |
1363 | scalar. |
1364 | |
1365 | =item * |
1366 | |
376d9008 |
1367 | C<sv_utf8_upgrade(sv)> converts the string of the scalar to its UTF-8 |
1368 | encoded form. C<sv_utf8_downgrade(sv)> does the opposite, if |
1369 | possible. C<sv_utf8_encode(sv)> is like sv_utf8_upgrade except that |
1370 | it does not set the C<UTF8> flag. C<sv_utf8_decode()> does the |
1371 | opposite of C<sv_utf8_encode()>. Note that none of these are to be |
1372 | used as general-purpose encoding or decoding interfaces: C<use Encode> |
1373 | for that. C<sv_utf8_upgrade()> is affected by the encoding pragma |
1374 | but C<sv_utf8_downgrade()> is not (since the encoding pragma is |
1375 | designed to be a one-way street). |
95a1a48b |
1376 | |
1377 | =item * |
1378 | |
376d9008 |
1379 | C<is_utf8_char(s)> returns true if the pointer points to a valid UTF-8 |
90f968e0 |
1380 | character. |
95a1a48b |
1381 | |
1382 | =item * |
1383 | |
376d9008 |
1384 | C<is_utf8_string(buf, len)> returns true if C<len> bytes of the buffer |
95a1a48b |
1385 | are valid UTF-8. |
1386 | |
1387 | =item * |
1388 | |
376d9008 |
1389 | C<UTF8SKIP(buf)> will return the number of bytes in the UTF-8 encoded |
1390 | character in the buffer. C<UNISKIP(chr)> will return the number of bytes |
1391 | required to UTF-8-encode the Unicode character code point. C<UTF8SKIP()> |
90f968e0 |
1392 | is useful for example for iterating over the characters of a UTF-8 |
376d9008 |
1393 | encoded buffer; C<UNISKIP()> is useful, for example, in computing |
90f968e0 |
1394 | the size required for a UTF-8 encoded buffer. |
95a1a48b |
1395 | |
1396 | =item * |
1397 | |
376d9008 |
1398 | C<utf8_distance(a, b)> will tell the distance in characters between the |
95a1a48b |
1399 | two pointers pointing to the same UTF-8 encoded buffer. |
1400 | |
1401 | =item * |
1402 | |
376d9008 |
1403 | C<utf8_hop(s, off)> will return a pointer to an UTF-8 encoded buffer |
1404 | that is C<off> (positive or negative) Unicode characters displaced |
1405 | from the UTF-8 buffer C<s>. Be careful not to overstep the buffer: |
1406 | C<utf8_hop()> will merrily run off the end or the beginning of the |
1407 | buffer if told to do so. |
95a1a48b |
1408 | |
d2cc3551 |
1409 | =item * |
1410 | |
376d9008 |
1411 | C<pv_uni_display(dsv, spv, len, pvlim, flags)> and |
1412 | C<sv_uni_display(dsv, ssv, pvlim, flags)> are useful for debugging the |
1413 | output of Unicode strings and scalars. By default they are useful |
1414 | only for debugging--they display B<all> characters as hexadecimal code |
1bfb14c4 |
1415 | points--but with the flags C<UNI_DISPLAY_ISPRINT>, |
1416 | C<UNI_DISPLAY_BACKSLASH>, and C<UNI_DISPLAY_QQ> you can make the |
1417 | output more readable. |
d2cc3551 |
1418 | |
1419 | =item * |
1420 | |
376d9008 |
1421 | C<ibcmp_utf8(s1, pe1, u1, l1, u1, s2, pe2, l2, u2)> can be used to |
1422 | compare two strings case-insensitively in Unicode. For case-sensitive |
1423 | comparisons you can just use C<memEQ()> and C<memNE()> as usual. |
d2cc3551 |
1424 | |
c349b1b9 |
1425 | =back |
1426 | |
95a1a48b |
1427 | For more information, see L<perlapi>, and F<utf8.c> and F<utf8.h> |
1428 | in the Perl source code distribution. |
1429 | |
c29a771d |
1430 | =head1 BUGS |
1431 | |
376d9008 |
1432 | =head2 Interaction with Locales |
7eabb34d |
1433 | |
376d9008 |
1434 | Use of locales with Unicode data may lead to odd results. Currently, |
1435 | Perl attempts to attach 8-bit locale info to characters in the range |
1436 | 0..255, but this technique is demonstrably incorrect for locales that |
1437 | use characters above that range when mapped into Unicode. Perl's |
1438 | Unicode support will also tend to run slower. Use of locales with |
1439 | Unicode is discouraged. |
c29a771d |
1440 | |
376d9008 |
1441 | =head2 Interaction with Extensions |
7eabb34d |
1442 | |
376d9008 |
1443 | When Perl exchanges data with an extension, the extension should be |
7eabb34d |
1444 | able to understand the UTF-8 flag and act accordingly. If the |
376d9008 |
1445 | extension doesn't know about the flag, it's likely that the extension |
1446 | will return incorrectly-flagged data. |
7eabb34d |
1447 | |
1448 | So if you're working with Unicode data, consult the documentation of |
1449 | every module you're using if there are any issues with Unicode data |
1450 | exchange. If the documentation does not talk about Unicode at all, |
a73d23f6 |
1451 | suspect the worst and probably look at the source to learn how the |
376d9008 |
1452 | module is implemented. Modules written completely in Perl shouldn't |
a73d23f6 |
1453 | cause problems. Modules that directly or indirectly access code written |
1454 | in other programming languages are at risk. |
7eabb34d |
1455 | |
376d9008 |
1456 | For affected functions, the simple strategy to avoid data corruption is |
7eabb34d |
1457 | to always make the encoding of the exchanged data explicit. Choose an |
376d9008 |
1458 | encoding that you know the extension can handle. Convert arguments passed |
7eabb34d |
1459 | to the extensions to that encoding and convert results back from that |
1460 | encoding. Write wrapper functions that do the conversions for you, so |
1461 | you can later change the functions when the extension catches up. |
1462 | |
376d9008 |
1463 | To provide an example, let's say the popular Foo::Bar::escape_html |
7eabb34d |
1464 | function doesn't deal with Unicode data yet. The wrapper function |
1465 | would convert the argument to raw UTF-8 and convert the result back to |
376d9008 |
1466 | Perl's internal representation like so: |
7eabb34d |
1467 | |
1468 | sub my_escape_html ($) { |
1469 | my($what) = shift; |
1470 | return unless defined $what; |
1471 | Encode::decode_utf8(Foo::Bar::escape_html(Encode::encode_utf8($what))); |
1472 | } |
1473 | |
1474 | Sometimes, when the extension does not convert data but just stores |
1475 | and retrieves them, you will be in a position to use the otherwise |
1476 | dangerous Encode::_utf8_on() function. Let's say the popular |
66b79f27 |
1477 | C<Foo::Bar> extension, written in C, provides a C<param> method that |
7eabb34d |
1478 | lets you store and retrieve data according to these prototypes: |
1479 | |
1480 | $self->param($name, $value); # set a scalar |
1481 | $value = $self->param($name); # retrieve a scalar |
1482 | |
1483 | If it does not yet provide support for any encoding, one could write a |
1484 | derived class with such a C<param> method: |
1485 | |
1486 | sub param { |
1487 | my($self,$name,$value) = @_; |
1488 | utf8::upgrade($name); # make sure it is UTF-8 encoded |
1489 | if (defined $value) |
1490 | utf8::upgrade($value); # make sure it is UTF-8 encoded |
1491 | return $self->SUPER::param($name,$value); |
1492 | } else { |
1493 | my $ret = $self->SUPER::param($name); |
1494 | Encode::_utf8_on($ret); # we know, it is UTF-8 encoded |
1495 | return $ret; |
1496 | } |
1497 | } |
1498 | |
a73d23f6 |
1499 | Some extensions provide filters on data entry/exit points, such as |
1500 | DB_File::filter_store_key and family. Look out for such filters in |
66b79f27 |
1501 | the documentation of your extensions, they can make the transition to |
7eabb34d |
1502 | Unicode data much easier. |
1503 | |
376d9008 |
1504 | =head2 Speed |
7eabb34d |
1505 | |
c29a771d |
1506 | Some functions are slower when working on UTF-8 encoded strings than |
574c8022 |
1507 | on byte encoded strings. All functions that need to hop over |
7c17141f |
1508 | characters such as length(), substr() or index(), or matching regular |
1509 | expressions can work B<much> faster when the underlying data are |
1510 | byte-encoded. |
1511 | |
1512 | In Perl 5.8.0 the slowness was often quite spectacular; in Perl 5.8.1 |
1513 | a caching scheme was introduced which will hopefully make the slowness |
a104b433 |
1514 | somewhat less spectacular, at least for some operations. In general, |
1515 | operations with UTF-8 encoded strings are still slower. As an example, |
1516 | the Unicode properties (character classes) like C<\p{Nd}> are known to |
1517 | be quite a bit slower (5-20 times) than their simpler counterparts |
1518 | like C<\d> (then again, there 268 Unicode characters matching C<Nd> |
1519 | compared with the 10 ASCII characters matching C<d>). |
666f95b9 |
1520 | |
c8d992ba |
1521 | =head2 Porting code from perl-5.6.X |
1522 | |
1523 | Perl 5.8 has a different Unicode model from 5.6. In 5.6 the programmer |
1524 | was required to use the C<utf8> pragma to declare that a given scope |
1525 | expected to deal with Unicode data and had to make sure that only |
1526 | Unicode data were reaching that scope. If you have code that is |
1527 | working with 5.6, you will need some of the following adjustments to |
1528 | your code. The examples are written such that the code will continue |
1529 | to work under 5.6, so you should be safe to try them out. |
1530 | |
1531 | =over 4 |
1532 | |
1533 | =item * |
1534 | |
1535 | A filehandle that should read or write UTF-8 |
1536 | |
1537 | if ($] > 5.007) { |
1538 | binmode $fh, ":utf8"; |
1539 | } |
1540 | |
1541 | =item * |
1542 | |
1543 | A scalar that is going to be passed to some extension |
1544 | |
1545 | Be it Compress::Zlib, Apache::Request or any extension that has no |
1546 | mention of Unicode in the manpage, you need to make sure that the |
1547 | UTF-8 flag is stripped off. Note that at the time of this writing |
1548 | (October 2002) the mentioned modules are not UTF-8-aware. Please |
1549 | check the documentation to verify if this is still true. |
1550 | |
1551 | if ($] > 5.007) { |
1552 | require Encode; |
1553 | $val = Encode::encode_utf8($val); # make octets |
1554 | } |
1555 | |
1556 | =item * |
1557 | |
1558 | A scalar we got back from an extension |
1559 | |
1560 | If you believe the scalar comes back as UTF-8, you will most likely |
1561 | want the UTF-8 flag restored: |
1562 | |
1563 | if ($] > 5.007) { |
1564 | require Encode; |
1565 | $val = Encode::decode_utf8($val); |
1566 | } |
1567 | |
1568 | =item * |
1569 | |
1570 | Same thing, if you are really sure it is UTF-8 |
1571 | |
1572 | if ($] > 5.007) { |
1573 | require Encode; |
1574 | Encode::_utf8_on($val); |
1575 | } |
1576 | |
1577 | =item * |
1578 | |
1579 | A wrapper for fetchrow_array and fetchrow_hashref |
1580 | |
1581 | When the database contains only UTF-8, a wrapper function or method is |
1582 | a convenient way to replace all your fetchrow_array and |
1583 | fetchrow_hashref calls. A wrapper function will also make it easier to |
1584 | adapt to future enhancements in your database driver. Note that at the |
1585 | time of this writing (October 2002), the DBI has no standardized way |
1586 | to deal with UTF-8 data. Please check the documentation to verify if |
1587 | that is still true. |
1588 | |
1589 | sub fetchrow { |
1590 | my($self, $sth, $what) = @_; # $what is one of fetchrow_{array,hashref} |
1591 | if ($] < 5.007) { |
1592 | return $sth->$what; |
1593 | } else { |
1594 | require Encode; |
1595 | if (wantarray) { |
1596 | my @arr = $sth->$what; |
1597 | for (@arr) { |
1598 | defined && /[^\000-\177]/ && Encode::_utf8_on($_); |
1599 | } |
1600 | return @arr; |
1601 | } else { |
1602 | my $ret = $sth->$what; |
1603 | if (ref $ret) { |
1604 | for my $k (keys %$ret) { |
1605 | defined && /[^\000-\177]/ && Encode::_utf8_on($_) for $ret->{$k}; |
1606 | } |
1607 | return $ret; |
1608 | } else { |
1609 | defined && /[^\000-\177]/ && Encode::_utf8_on($_) for $ret; |
1610 | return $ret; |
1611 | } |
1612 | } |
1613 | } |
1614 | } |
1615 | |
1616 | |
1617 | =item * |
1618 | |
1619 | A large scalar that you know can only contain ASCII |
1620 | |
1621 | Scalars that contain only ASCII and are marked as UTF-8 are sometimes |
1622 | a drag to your program. If you recognize such a situation, just remove |
1623 | the UTF-8 flag: |
1624 | |
1625 | utf8::downgrade($val) if $] > 5.007; |
1626 | |
1627 | =back |
1628 | |
393fec97 |
1629 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
1630 | |
72ff2908 |
1631 | L<perluniintro>, L<encoding>, L<Encode>, L<open>, L<utf8>, L<bytes>, |
a05d7ebb |
1632 | L<perlretut>, L<perlvar/"${^UNICODE}"> |
393fec97 |
1633 | |
1634 | =cut |