2 # $Id: Encode.pm,v 2.39 2009/11/26 09:23:48 dankogai Exp $
7 our $VERSION = sprintf "%d.%02d", q$Revision: 2.39 $ =~ /(\d+)/g;
10 XSLoader::load( __PACKAGE__, $VERSION );
13 use base qw/Exporter/;
15 # Public, encouraged API is exported by default
18 decode decode_utf8 encode encode_utf8 str2bytes bytes2str
19 encodings find_encoding clone_encoding
22 DIE_ON_ERR WARN_ON_ERR RETURN_ON_ERR LEAVE_SRC
23 PERLQQ HTMLCREF XMLCREF STOP_AT_PARTIAL
26 FB_DEFAULT FB_CROAK FB_QUIET FB_WARN
27 FB_PERLQQ FB_HTMLCREF FB_XMLCREF
31 _utf8_off _utf8_on define_encoding from_to is_16bit is_8bit
32 is_utf8 perlio_ok resolve_alias utf8_downgrade utf8_upgrade
34 @FB_FLAGS, @FB_CONSTS,
38 all => [ @EXPORT, @EXPORT_OK ],
39 default => [ @EXPORT ],
40 fallbacks => [ @FB_CONSTS ],
41 fallback_all => [ @FB_CONSTS, @FB_FLAGS ],
44 # Documentation moved after __END__ for speed - NI-S
46 our $ON_EBCDIC = ( ord("A") == 193 );
50 # Make a %Encoding package variable to allow a certain amount of cheating
53 require Encode::Config;
55 # https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=435505#c2
56 # to find why sig handers inside eval{} are disabled.
60 require Encode::ConfigLocal;
66 if ( @_ and $_[0] eq ":all" ) {
67 %enc = ( %Encoding, %ExtModule );
71 for my $mod ( map { m/::/o ? $_ : "Encode::$_" } @_ ) {
73 for my $enc ( keys %ExtModule ) {
74 $ExtModule{$enc} eq $mod and $enc{$enc} = $mod;
78 return sort { lc $a cmp lc $b }
79 grep { !/^(?:Internal|Unicode|Guess)$/o } keys %enc;
83 my $obj = ref( $_[0] ) ? $_[0] : find_encoding( $_[0] );
84 $obj->can("perlio_ok") and return $obj->perlio_ok();
85 return 0; # safety net
91 $Encoding{$name} = $obj;
93 define_alias( $lc => $obj ) unless $lc eq $name;
96 define_alias( $alias, $obj );
102 my ( $class, $name, $skip_external ) = @_;
104 ref($name) && $name->can('renew') and return $name;
105 exists $Encoding{$name} and return $Encoding{$name};
107 exists $Encoding{$lc} and return $Encoding{$lc};
109 my $oc = $class->find_alias($name);
110 defined($oc) and return $oc;
111 $lc ne $name and $oc = $class->find_alias($lc);
112 defined($oc) and return $oc;
114 unless ($skip_external) {
115 if ( my $mod = $ExtModule{$name} || $ExtModule{$lc} ) {
118 eval { require $mod; };
119 exists $Encoding{$name} and return $Encoding{$name};
125 sub find_encoding($;$) {
126 my ( $name, $skip_external ) = @_;
127 return __PACKAGE__->getEncoding( $name, $skip_external );
130 sub resolve_alias($) {
131 my $obj = find_encoding(shift);
132 defined $obj and return $obj->name;
136 sub clone_encoding($) {
137 my $obj = find_encoding(shift);
139 eval { require Storable };
141 return Storable::dclone($obj);
145 my ( $name, $string, $check ) = @_;
146 return undef unless defined $string;
147 $string .= '' if ref $string; # stringify;
149 unless ( defined $name ) {
151 Carp::croak("Encoding name should not be undef");
153 my $enc = find_encoding($name);
154 unless ( defined $enc ) {
156 Carp::croak("Unknown encoding '$name'");
158 my $octets = $enc->encode( $string, $check );
159 $_[1] = $string if $check and !ref $check and !( $check & LEAVE_SRC() );
162 *str2bytes = \&encode;
165 my ( $name, $octets, $check ) = @_;
166 return undef unless defined $octets;
167 $octets .= '' if ref $octets;
169 my $enc = find_encoding($name);
170 unless ( defined $enc ) {
172 Carp::croak("Unknown encoding '$name'");
174 my $string = $enc->decode( $octets, $check );
175 $_[1] = $octets if $check and !ref $check and !( $check & LEAVE_SRC() );
178 *bytes2str = \&decode;
181 my ( $string, $from, $to, $check ) = @_;
182 return undef unless defined $string;
184 my $f = find_encoding($from);
185 unless ( defined $f ) {
187 Carp::croak("Unknown encoding '$from'");
189 my $t = find_encoding($to);
190 unless ( defined $t ) {
192 Carp::croak("Unknown encoding '$to'");
194 my $uni = $f->decode($string);
195 $_[0] = $string = $t->encode( $uni, $check );
196 return undef if ( $check && length($uni) );
197 return defined( $_[0] ) ? length($string) : undef;
206 sub decode_utf8($;$) {
207 my ( $str, $check ) = @_;
208 return $str if is_utf8($str);
210 return decode( "utf8", $str, $check );
213 return decode( "utf8", $str );
218 predefine_encodings(1);
221 # This is to restore %Encoding if really needed;
224 sub predefine_encodings {
225 require Encode::Encoding;
226 no warnings 'redefine';
230 # was in Encode::UTF_EBCDIC
231 package Encode::UTF_EBCDIC;
232 push @Encode::UTF_EBCDIC::ISA, 'Encode::Encoding';
234 my ( $obj, $str, $chk ) = @_;
236 for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < length($str) ; $i++ ) {
239 utf8::unicode_to_native( ord( substr( $str, $i, 1 ) ) )
246 my ( $obj, $str, $chk ) = @_;
248 for ( my $i = 0 ; $i < length($str) ; $i++ ) {
251 utf8::native_to_unicode( ord( substr( $str, $i, 1 ) ) )
257 $Encode::Encoding{Unicode} =
258 bless { Name => "UTF_EBCDIC" } => "Encode::UTF_EBCDIC";
262 package Encode::Internal;
263 push @Encode::Internal::ISA, 'Encode::Encoding';
265 my ( $obj, $str, $chk ) = @_;
271 $Encode::Encoding{Unicode} =
272 bless { Name => "Internal" } => "Encode::Internal";
277 # was in Encode::utf8
278 package Encode::utf8;
279 push @Encode::utf8::ISA, 'Encode::Encoding';
283 Encode::DEBUG and warn __PACKAGE__, " XS on";
284 *decode = \&decode_xs;
285 *encode = \&encode_xs;
288 Encode::DEBUG and warn __PACKAGE__, " XS off";
290 my ( $obj, $octets, $chk ) = @_;
291 my $str = Encode::decode_utf8($octets);
292 if ( defined $str ) {
299 my ( $obj, $string, $chk ) = @_;
300 my $octets = Encode::encode_utf8($string);
305 *cat_decode = sub { # ($obj, $dst, $src, $pos, $trm, $chk)
306 # currently ignores $chk
307 my ( $obj, undef, undef, $pos, $trm ) = @_;
308 my ( $rdst, $rsrc, $rpos ) = \@_[ 1, 2, 3 ];
310 if ( ( my $npos = index( $$rsrc, $trm, $pos ) ) >= 0 ) {
312 substr( $$rsrc, $pos, $npos - $pos + length($trm) );
313 $$rpos = $npos + length($trm);
316 $$rdst .= substr( $$rsrc, $pos );
317 $$rpos = length($$rsrc);
320 $Encode::Encoding{utf8} =
321 bless { Name => "utf8" } => "Encode::utf8";
322 $Encode::Encoding{"utf-8-strict"} =
323 bless { Name => "utf-8-strict", strict_utf8 => 1 } =>
334 Encode - character encodings
340 =head2 Table of Contents
342 Encode consists of a collection of modules whose details are too big
343 to fit in one document. This POD itself explains the top-level APIs
344 and general topics at a glance. For other topics and more details,
348 --------------------------------------------------------
349 Encode::Alias Alias definitions to encodings
350 Encode::Encoding Encode Implementation Base Class
351 Encode::Supported List of Supported Encodings
352 Encode::CN Simplified Chinese Encodings
353 Encode::JP Japanese Encodings
354 Encode::KR Korean Encodings
355 Encode::TW Traditional Chinese Encodings
356 --------------------------------------------------------
360 The C<Encode> module provides the interfaces between Perl's strings
361 and the rest of the system. Perl strings are sequences of
364 The repertoire of characters that Perl can represent is at least that
365 defined by the Unicode Consortium. On most platforms the ordinal
366 values of the characters (as returned by C<ord(ch)>) is the "Unicode
367 codepoint" for the character (the exceptions are those platforms where
368 the legacy encoding is some variant of EBCDIC rather than a super-set
369 of ASCII - see L<perlebcdic>).
371 Traditionally, computer data has been moved around in 8-bit chunks
372 often called "bytes". These chunks are also known as "octets" in
373 networking standards. Perl is widely used to manipulate data of many
374 types - not only strings of characters representing human or computer
375 languages but also "binary" data being the machine's representation of
376 numbers, pixels in an image - or just about anything.
378 When Perl is processing "binary data", the programmer wants Perl to
379 process "sequences of bytes". This is not a problem for Perl - as a
380 byte has 256 possible values, it easily fits in Perl's much larger
389 I<character>: a character in the range 0..(2**32-1) (or more).
390 (What Perl's strings are made of.)
394 I<byte>: a character in the range 0..255
395 (A special case of a Perl character.)
399 I<octet>: 8 bits of data, with ordinal values 0..255
400 (Term for bytes passed to or from a non-Perl context, e.g. a disk file.)
404 =head1 PERL ENCODING API
408 =item $octets = encode(ENCODING, $string [, CHECK])
410 Encodes a string from Perl's internal form into I<ENCODING> and returns
411 a sequence of octets. ENCODING can be either a canonical name or
412 an alias. For encoding names and aliases, see L</"Defining Aliases">.
413 For CHECK, see L</"Handling Malformed Data">.
415 For example, to convert a string from Perl's internal format to
416 iso-8859-1 (also known as Latin1),
418 $octets = encode("iso-8859-1", $string);
420 B<CAVEAT>: When you run C<$octets = encode("utf8", $string)>, then
421 $octets B<may not be equal to> $string. Though they both contain the
422 same data, the UTF8 flag for $octets is B<always> off. When you
423 encode anything, UTF8 flag of the result is always off, even when it
424 contains completely valid utf8 string. See L</"The UTF8 flag"> below.
426 If the $string is C<undef> then C<undef> is returned.
428 =item $string = decode(ENCODING, $octets [, CHECK])
430 Decodes a sequence of octets assumed to be in I<ENCODING> into Perl's
431 internal form and returns the resulting string. As in encode(),
432 ENCODING can be either a canonical name or an alias. For encoding names
433 and aliases, see L</"Defining Aliases">. For CHECK, see
434 L</"Handling Malformed Data">.
436 For example, to convert ISO-8859-1 data to a string in Perl's internal format:
438 $string = decode("iso-8859-1", $octets);
440 B<CAVEAT>: When you run C<$string = decode("utf8", $octets)>, then $string
441 B<may not be equal to> $octets. Though they both contain the same data,
442 the UTF8 flag for $string is on unless $octets entirely consists of
443 ASCII data (or EBCDIC on EBCDIC machines). See L</"The UTF8 flag">
446 If the $string is C<undef> then C<undef> is returned.
448 =item [$obj =] find_encoding(ENCODING)
450 Returns the I<encoding object> corresponding to ENCODING. Returns
451 undef if no matching ENCODING is find.
453 This object is what actually does the actual (en|de)coding.
455 $utf8 = decode($name, $bytes);
460 $obj = find_encoding($name);
461 croak qq(encoding "$name" not found) unless ref $obj;
465 with more error checking.
467 Therefore you can save time by reusing this object as follows;
469 my $enc = find_encoding("iso-8859-1");
471 my $utf8 = $enc->decode($_);
472 # and do someting with $utf8;
475 Besides C<< ->decode >> and C<< ->encode >>, other methods are
476 available as well. For instance, C<< -> name >> returns the canonical
477 name of the encoding object.
479 find_encoding("latin1")->name; # iso-8859-1
481 See L<Encode::Encoding> for details.
483 =item [$length =] from_to($octets, FROM_ENC, TO_ENC [, CHECK])
485 Converts B<in-place> data between two encodings. The data in $octets
486 must be encoded as octets and not as characters in Perl's internal
487 format. For example, to convert ISO-8859-1 data to Microsoft's CP1250
490 from_to($octets, "iso-8859-1", "cp1250");
492 and to convert it back:
494 from_to($octets, "cp1250", "iso-8859-1");
496 Note that because the conversion happens in place, the data to be
497 converted cannot be a string constant; it must be a scalar variable.
499 from_to() returns the length of the converted string in octets on
500 success, I<undef> on error.
502 B<CAVEAT>: The following operations look the same but are not quite so;
504 from_to($data, "iso-8859-1", "utf8"); #1
505 $data = decode("iso-8859-1", $data); #2
507 Both #1 and #2 make $data consist of a completely valid UTF-8 string
508 but only #2 turns UTF8 flag on. #1 is equivalent to
510 $data = encode("utf8", decode("iso-8859-1", $data));
512 See L</"The UTF8 flag"> below.
516 from_to($octets, $from, $to, $check);
520 $octets = encode($to, decode($from, $octets), $check);
522 Yes, it does not respect the $check during decoding. It is
523 deliberately done that way. If you need minute control, C<decode>
524 then C<encode> as follows;
526 $octets = encode($to, decode($from, $octets, $check_from), $check_to);
528 =item $octets = encode_utf8($string);
530 Equivalent to C<$octets = encode("utf8", $string);> The characters
531 that comprise $string are encoded in Perl's internal format and the
532 result is returned as a sequence of octets. All possible
533 characters have a UTF-8 representation so this function cannot fail.
536 =item $string = decode_utf8($octets [, CHECK]);
538 equivalent to C<$string = decode("utf8", $octets [, CHECK])>.
539 The sequence of octets represented by
540 $octets is decoded from UTF-8 into a sequence of logical
541 characters. Not all sequences of octets form valid UTF-8 encodings, so
542 it is possible for this call to fail. For CHECK, see
543 L</"Handling Malformed Data">.
547 =head2 Listing available encodings
550 @list = Encode->encodings();
552 Returns a list of the canonical names of the available encodings that
553 are loaded. To get a list of all available encodings including the
554 ones that are not loaded yet, say
556 @all_encodings = Encode->encodings(":all");
558 Or you can give the name of a specific module.
560 @with_jp = Encode->encodings("Encode::JP");
562 When "::" is not in the name, "Encode::" is assumed.
564 @ebcdic = Encode->encodings("EBCDIC");
566 To find out in detail which encodings are supported by this package,
567 see L<Encode::Supported>.
569 =head2 Defining Aliases
571 To add a new alias to a given encoding, use:
575 define_alias(newName => ENCODING);
577 After that, newName can be used as an alias for ENCODING.
578 ENCODING may be either the name of an encoding or an
581 But before you do so, make sure the alias is nonexistent with
582 C<resolve_alias()>, which returns the canonical name thereof.
585 Encode::resolve_alias("latin1") eq "iso-8859-1" # true
586 Encode::resolve_alias("iso-8859-12") # false; nonexistent
587 Encode::resolve_alias($name) eq $name # true if $name is canonical
589 resolve_alias() does not need C<use Encode::Alias>; it can be
590 exported via C<use Encode qw(resolve_alias)>.
592 See L<Encode::Alias> for details.
594 =head2 Finding IANA Character Set Registry names
596 The canonical name of a given encoding does not necessarily agree with
597 IANA IANA Character Set Registry, commonly seen as C<< Content-Type:
598 text/plain; charset=I<whatever> >>. For most cases canonical names
599 work but sometimes it does not (notably 'utf-8-strict').
601 Therefore as of Encode version 2.21, a new method C<mime_name()> is added.
604 my $enc = find_encoding('UTF-8');
605 warn $enc->name; # utf-8-strict
606 warn $enc->mime_name; # UTF-8
608 See also: L<Encode::Encoding>
610 =head1 Encoding via PerlIO
612 If your perl supports I<PerlIO> (which is the default), you can use a
613 PerlIO layer to decode and encode directly via a filehandle. The
614 following two examples are totally identical in their functionality.
617 open my $in, "<:encoding(shiftjis)", $infile or die;
618 open my $out, ">:encoding(euc-jp)", $outfile or die;
619 while(<$in>){ print $out $_; }
622 open my $in, "<", $infile or die;
623 open my $out, ">", $outfile or die;
625 from_to($_, "shiftjis", "euc-jp", 1);
629 Unfortunately, it may be that encodings are PerlIO-savvy. You can check
630 if your encoding is supported by PerlIO by calling the C<perlio_ok>
633 Encode::perlio_ok("hz"); # False
634 find_encoding("euc-cn")->perlio_ok; # True where PerlIO is available
636 use Encode qw(perlio_ok); # exported upon request
639 Fortunately, all encodings that come with Encode core are PerlIO-savvy
640 except for hz and ISO-2022-kr. For gory details, see
641 L<Encode::Encoding> and L<Encode::PerlIO>.
643 =head1 Handling Malformed Data
645 The optional I<CHECK> argument tells Encode what to do when it
646 encounters malformed data. Without CHECK, Encode::FB_DEFAULT ( == 0 )
649 As of version 2.12 Encode supports coderef values for CHECK. See below.
653 =item B<NOTE:> Not all encoding support this feature
655 Some encodings ignore I<CHECK> argument. For example,
656 L<Encode::Unicode> ignores I<CHECK> and it always croaks on error.
660 Now here is the list of I<CHECK> values available
664 =item I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_DEFAULT ( == 0)
666 If I<CHECK> is 0, (en|de)code will put a I<substitution character> in
667 place of a malformed character. When you encode, E<lt>subcharE<gt>
668 will be used. When you decode the code point C<0xFFFD> is used. If
669 the data is supposed to be UTF-8, an optional lexical warning
670 (category utf8) is given.
672 =item I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_CROAK ( == 1)
674 If I<CHECK> is 1, methods will die on error immediately with an error
675 message. Therefore, when I<CHECK> is set to 1, you should trap the
676 error with eval{} unless you really want to let it die.
678 =item I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_QUIET
680 If I<CHECK> is set to Encode::FB_QUIET, (en|de)code will immediately
681 return the portion of the data that has been processed so far when an
682 error occurs. The data argument will be overwritten with everything
683 after that point (that is, the unprocessed part of data). This is
684 handy when you have to call decode repeatedly in the case where your
685 source data may contain partial multi-byte character sequences,
686 (i.e. you are reading with a fixed-width buffer). Here is a sample
687 code that does exactly this:
689 my $buffer = ''; my $string = '';
690 while(read $fh, $buffer, 256, length($buffer)){
691 $string .= decode($encoding, $buffer, Encode::FB_QUIET);
692 # $buffer now contains the unprocessed partial character
695 =item I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_WARN
697 This is the same as above, except that it warns on error. Handy when
698 you are debugging the mode above.
700 =item perlqq mode (I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_PERLQQ)
702 =item HTML charref mode (I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_HTMLCREF)
704 =item XML charref mode (I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_XMLCREF)
706 For encodings that are implemented by Encode::XS, CHECK ==
707 Encode::FB_PERLQQ turns (en|de)code into C<perlqq> fallback mode.
709 When you decode, C<\xI<HH>> will be inserted for a malformed character,
710 where I<HH> is the hex representation of the octet that could not be
711 decoded to utf8. And when you encode, C<\x{I<HHHH>}> will be inserted,
712 where I<HHHH> is the Unicode ID of the character that cannot be found
713 in the character repertoire of the encoding.
715 HTML/XML character reference modes are about the same, in place of
716 C<\x{I<HHHH>}>, HTML uses C<&#I<NNN>;> where I<NNN> is a decimal number and
717 XML uses C<&#xI<HHHH>;> where I<HHHH> is the hexadecimal number.
719 In Encode 2.10 or later, C<LEAVE_SRC> is also implied.
723 These modes are actually set via a bitmask. Here is how the FB_XX
724 constants are laid out. You can import the FB_XX constants via
725 C<use Encode qw(:fallbacks)>; you can import the generic bitmask
726 constants via C<use Encode qw(:fallback_all)>.
728 FB_DEFAULT FB_CROAK FB_QUIET FB_WARN FB_PERLQQ
731 RETURN_ON_ERR 0x0004 X X
741 =item Encode::LEAVE_SRC
743 If the C<Encode::LEAVE_SRC> bit is not set, but I<CHECK> is, then the second
744 argument to C<encode()> or C<decode()> may be assigned to by the functions. If
745 you're not interested in this, then bitwise-or the bitmask with it.
749 =head2 coderef for CHECK
751 As of Encode 2.12 CHECK can also be a code reference which takes the
752 ord value of unmapped caharacter as an argument and returns a string
753 that represents the fallback character. For instance,
755 $ascii = encode("ascii", $utf8, sub{ sprintf "<U+%04X>", shift });
757 Acts like FB_PERLQQ but E<lt>U+I<XXXX>E<gt> is used instead of
760 =head1 Defining Encodings
762 To define a new encoding, use:
764 use Encode qw(define_encoding);
765 define_encoding($object, 'canonicalName' [, alias...]);
767 I<canonicalName> will be associated with I<$object>. The object
768 should provide the interface described in L<Encode::Encoding>.
769 If more than two arguments are provided then additional
770 arguments are taken as aliases for I<$object>.
772 See L<Encode::Encoding> for more details.
776 Before the introduction of Unicode support in perl, The C<eq> operator
777 just compared the strings represented by two scalars. Beginning with
778 perl 5.8, C<eq> compares two strings with simultaneous consideration of
779 I<the UTF8 flag>. To explain why we made it so, I will quote page 402 of
780 C<Programming Perl, 3rd ed.>
786 Old byte-oriented programs should not spontaneously break on the old
787 byte-oriented data they used to work on.
791 Old byte-oriented programs should magically start working on the new
792 character-oriented data when appropriate.
796 Programs should run just as fast in the new character-oriented mode
797 as in the old byte-oriented mode.
801 Perl should remain one language, rather than forking into a
802 byte-oriented Perl and a character-oriented Perl.
806 Back when C<Programming Perl, 3rd ed.> was written, not even Perl 5.6.0
807 was born and many features documented in the book remained
808 unimplemented for a long time. Perl 5.8 corrected this and the introduction
809 of the UTF8 flag is one of them. You can think of this perl notion as of a
810 byte-oriented mode (UTF8 flag off) and a character-oriented mode (UTF8
813 Here is how Encode takes care of the UTF8 flag.
819 When you encode, the resulting UTF8 flag is always off.
823 When you decode, the resulting UTF8 flag is on unless you can
824 unambiguously represent data. Here is the definition of
827 After C<$utf8 = decode('foo', $octet);>,
829 When $octet is... The UTF8 flag in $utf8 is
830 ---------------------------------------------
831 In ASCII only (or EBCDIC only) OFF
833 In any other Encoding ON
834 ---------------------------------------------
836 As you see, there is one exception, In ASCII. That way you can assume
837 Goal #1. And with Encode Goal #2 is assumed but you still have to be
838 careful in such cases mentioned in B<CAVEAT> paragraphs.
840 This UTF8 flag is not visible in perl scripts, exactly for the same
841 reason you cannot (or you I<don't have to>) see if a scalar contains a
842 string, integer, or floating point number. But you can still peek
843 and poke these if you will. See the section below.
847 =head2 Messing with Perl's Internals
849 The following API uses parts of Perl's internals in the current
850 implementation. As such, they are efficient but may change.
854 =item is_utf8(STRING [, CHECK])
856 [INTERNAL] Tests whether the UTF8 flag is turned on in the STRING.
857 If CHECK is true, also checks the data in STRING for being well-formed
858 UTF-8. Returns true if successful, false otherwise.
860 As of perl 5.8.1, L<utf8> also has utf8::is_utf8().
862 =item _utf8_on(STRING)
864 [INTERNAL] Turns on the UTF8 flag in STRING. The data in STRING is
865 B<not> checked for being well-formed UTF-8. Do not use unless you
866 B<know> that the STRING is well-formed UTF-8. Returns the previous
867 state of the UTF8 flag (so please don't treat the return value as
868 indicating success or failure), or C<undef> if STRING is not a string.
870 This function does not work on tainted values.
872 =item _utf8_off(STRING)
874 [INTERNAL] Turns off the UTF8 flag in STRING. Do not use frivolously.
875 Returns the previous state of the UTF8 flag (so please don't treat the
876 return value as indicating success or failure), or C<undef> if STRING is
879 This function does not work on tainted values.
883 =head1 UTF-8 vs. utf8 vs. UTF8
885 ....We now view strings not as sequences of bytes, but as sequences
886 of numbers in the range 0 .. 2**32-1 (or in the case of 64-bit
887 computers, 0 .. 2**64-1) -- Programming Perl, 3rd ed.
889 That has been the perl's notion of UTF-8 but official UTF-8 is more
890 strict; Its ranges is much narrower (0 .. 10FFFF), some sequences are
891 not allowed (i.e. Those used in the surrogate pair, 0xFFFE, et al).
893 Now that is overruled by Larry Wall himself.
895 From: Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>
896 Date: December 04, 2004 11:51:58 JST
897 To: perl-unicode@perl.org
898 Subject: Re: Make Encode.pm support the real UTF-8
899 Message-Id: <20041204025158.GA28754@wall.org>
901 On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 10:12:12PM +0000, Tim Bunce wrote:
902 : I've no problem with 'utf8' being perl's unrestricted uft8 encoding,
903 : but "UTF-8" is the name of the standard and should give the
904 : corresponding behaviour.
906 For what it's worth, that's how I've always kept them straight in my
909 Also for what it's worth, Perl 6 will mostly default to strict but
910 make it easy to switch back to lax.
914 Do you copy? As of Perl 5.8.7, B<UTF-8> means strict, official UTF-8
915 while B<utf8> means liberal, lax, version thereof. And Encode version
916 2.10 or later thus groks the difference between C<UTF-8> and C"utf8".
918 encode("utf8", "\x{FFFF_FFFF}", 1); # okay
919 encode("UTF-8", "\x{FFFF_FFFF}", 1); # croaks
921 C<UTF-8> in Encode is actually a canonical name for C<utf-8-strict>.
922 Yes, the hyphen between "UTF" and "8" is important. Without it Encode
925 find_encoding("UTF-8")->name # is 'utf-8-strict'
926 find_encoding("utf-8")->name # ditto. names are case insensitive
927 find_encoding("utf_8")->name # ditto. "_" are treated as "-"
928 find_encoding("UTF8")->name # is 'utf8'.
930 The UTF8 flag is internally called UTF8, without a hyphen. It indicates
931 whether a string is internally encoded as utf8, also without a hypen.
936 L<Encode::Supported>,
941 L<perlunicode>, L<perluniintro>, L<perlunifaq>, L<perlunitut>
943 the Perl Unicode Mailing List E<lt>perl-unicode@perl.orgE<gt>
947 This project was originated by Nick Ing-Simmons and later maintained
948 by Dan Kogai E<lt>dankogai@dan.co.jpE<gt>. See AUTHORS for a full
949 list of people involved. For any questions, use
950 E<lt>perl-unicode@perl.orgE<gt> so we can all share.
952 While Dan Kogai retains the copyright as a maintainer, the credit
953 should go to all those involoved. See AUTHORS for those submitted
958 Copyright 2002-2006 Dan Kogai E<lt>dankogai@dan.co.jpE<gt>
960 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
961 it under the same terms as Perl itself.