8 our @ISA = qw(Exporter DynaLoader);
10 # Public, encouraged API is exported by default
36 # Documentation moved after __END__ for speed - NI-S
40 # Make a %encoding package variable to allow a certain amount of cheating
42 my @alias; # ordered matching list
43 my %alias; # cached known aliases
45 # 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
46 our @latin2iso_num = ( 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 16 );
65 sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }
67 grep { $_ ne 'Internal' }
75 # print "# findAlias $_\n";
76 unless (exists $alias{$_})
78 for (my $i=0; $i < @alias; $i += 2)
80 my $alias = $alias[$i];
81 my $val = $alias[$i+1];
83 if (ref($alias) eq 'Regexp' && $_ =~ $alias)
87 elsif (ref($alias) eq 'CODE')
89 $new = &{$alias}($val)
91 elsif (lc($_) eq lc($alias))
97 next if $new eq $_; # avoid (direct) recursion on bugs
98 my $enc = (ref($new)) ? $new : find_encoding($new);
114 my ($alias,$name) = splice(@_,0,2);
115 push(@alias, $alias => $name);
119 # Allow variants of iso-8859-1 etc.
120 define_alias( qr/^iso[-_]?(\d+)[-_](\d+)$/i => '"iso-$1-$2"' );
122 # At least HP-UX has these.
123 define_alias( qr/^iso8859(\d+)$/i => '"iso-8859-$1"' );
126 define_alias( qr/^(?:hp-)?(arabic|greek|hebrew|kana|roman|thai|turkish)8$/i => '"${1}8"' );
128 # The Official name of ASCII.
129 define_alias( qr/^ANSI[-_]?X3\.4[-_]?1968$/i => '"ascii"' );
131 # This is a font issue, not an encoding issue.
132 # (The currency symbol of the Latin 1 upper half
133 # has been redefined as the euro symbol.)
134 define_alias( qr/^(.+)\@euro$/i => '"$1"' );
136 # Allow latin-1 style names as well
137 define_alias( qr/^(?:iso[-_]?)?latin[-_]?(\d+)$/i => '"iso-8859-$latin2iso_num[$1]"' );
139 # Allow winlatin1 style names as well
140 define_alias( qr/^win(latin[12]|cyrillic|baltic|greek|turkish|hebrew|arabic|baltic|vietnamese)$/i => '"cp$winlatin2cp{\u$1}"' );
142 # Common names for non-latin prefered MIME names
143 define_alias( 'ascii' => 'US-ascii',
144 'cyrillic' => 'iso-8859-5',
145 'arabic' => 'iso-8859-6',
146 'greek' => 'iso-8859-7',
147 'hebrew' => 'iso-8859-8',
148 'thai' => 'iso-8859-11',
149 'tis620' => 'iso-8859-11',
152 # At least AIX has IBM-NNN (surprisingly...) instead of cpNNN.
153 # And Microsoft has their own naming (again, surprisingly).
154 define_alias( qr/^(?:ibm|ms)[-_]?(\d\d\d\d?)$/i => '"cp$1"');
156 # Sometimes seen with a leading zero.
157 define_alias( qr/^cp037$/i => '"cp37"');
160 define_alias( qr/^macRomanian$/i => '"macRumanian"');
162 # Standardize on the dashed versions.
163 define_alias( qr/^utf8$/i => 'utf-8' );
164 define_alias( qr/^koi8r$/i => 'koi8-r' );
165 define_alias( qr/^koi8u$/i => 'koi8-u' );
167 # Seen in some Linuxes.
168 define_alias( qr/^ujis$/i => 'euc-jp' );
170 # TODO: HP-UX '8' encodings arabic8 greek8 hebrew8 kana8 thai8 turkish8
171 # TODO: HP-UX '15' encodings japanese15 korean15 roi15
172 # TODO: Cyrillic encoding ISO-IR-111 (useful?)
173 # TODO: Chinese encodings GB18030 EUC-TW HZ
174 # TODO: Armenian encoding ARMSCII-8
175 # TODO: Hebrew encoding ISO-8859-8-1
176 # TODO: Thai encoding TCVN
177 # TODO: Korean encoding Johab
178 # TODO: Vietnamese encodings VPS
179 # TODO: Japanese encoding JIS (not the same as SJIS)
180 # TODO: Mac Asian+African encodings: Arabic Armenian Bengali Burmese
181 # ChineseSimp ChineseTrad Devanagari Ethiopic ExtArabic
182 # Farsi Georgian Gujarati Gurmukhi Hebrew Japanese
183 # Kannada Khmer Korean Laotian Malayalam Mongolian
184 # Oriya Sinhalese Symbol Tamil Telugu Tibetan Vietnamese
186 # Map white space and _ to '-'
187 define_alias( qr/^(\S+)[\s_]+(.*)$/i => '"$1-$2"' );
193 $encoding{$name} = $obj;
195 define_alias($lc => $obj) unless $lc eq $name;
199 define_alias($alias,$obj);
206 my ($class,$name) = @_;
208 if (ref($name) && $name->can('new_sequence'))
213 if (exists $encoding{$name})
215 return $encoding{$name};
217 if (exists $encoding{$lc})
219 return $encoding{$lc};
222 my $oc = $class->findAlias($name);
223 return $oc if defined $oc;
224 return $class->findAlias($lc) if $lc ne $name;
232 return __PACKAGE__->getEncoding($name);
237 my ($name,$string,$check) = @_;
238 my $enc = find_encoding($name);
239 croak("Unknown encoding '$name'") unless defined $enc;
240 my $octets = $enc->encode($string,$check);
241 return undef if ($check && length($string));
247 my ($name,$octets,$check) = @_;
248 my $enc = find_encoding($name);
249 croak("Unknown encoding '$name'") unless defined $enc;
250 my $string = $enc->decode($octets,$check);
251 $_[1] = $octets if $check;
257 my ($string,$from,$to,$check) = @_;
258 my $f = find_encoding($from);
259 croak("Unknown encoding '$from'") unless defined $f;
260 my $t = find_encoding($to);
261 croak("Unknown encoding '$to'") unless defined $t;
262 my $uni = $f->decode($string,$check);
263 return undef if ($check && length($string));
264 $string = $t->encode($uni,$check);
265 return undef if ($check && length($uni));
266 return length($_[0] = $string);
279 return undef unless utf8::decode($str);
283 require Encode::Encoding;
285 require Encode::Internal;
286 require Encode::Unicode;
287 require Encode::utf8;
288 require Encode::iso10646_1;
289 require Encode::ucs2_le;
297 Encode - character encodings
305 The C<Encode> module provides the interfaces between Perl's strings
306 and the rest of the system. Perl strings are sequences of B<characters>.
308 The repertoire of characters that Perl can represent is at least that
309 defined by the Unicode Consortium. On most platforms the ordinal
310 values of the characters (as returned by C<ord(ch)>) is the "Unicode
311 codepoint" for the character (the exceptions are those platforms where
312 the legacy encoding is some variant of EBCDIC rather than a super-set
313 of ASCII - see L<perlebcdic>).
315 Traditionaly computer data has been moved around in 8-bit chunks
316 often called "bytes". These chunks are also known as "octets" in
317 networking standards. Perl is widely used to manipulate data of
318 many types - not only strings of characters representing human or
319 computer languages but also "binary" data being the machines representation
320 of numbers, pixels in an image - or just about anything.
322 When Perl is processing "binary data" the programmer wants Perl to process
323 "sequences of bytes". This is not a problem for Perl - as a byte has 256
324 possible values it easily fits in Perl's much larger "logical character".
332 I<character>: a character in the range 0..(2**32-1) (or more).
333 (What Perl's strings are made of.)
337 I<byte>: a character in the range 0..255
338 (A special case of a Perl character.)
342 I<octet>: 8 bits of data, with ordinal values 0..255
343 (Term for bytes passed to or from a non-Perl context, e.g. disk file.)
347 The marker [INTERNAL] marks Internal Implementation Details, in
348 general meant only for those who think they know what they are doing,
349 and such details may change in future releases.
353 =head2 Characteristics of an Encoding
355 An encoding has a "repertoire" of characters that it can represent,
356 and for each representable character there is at least one sequence of
357 octets that represents it.
359 =head2 Types of Encodings
361 Encodings can be divided into the following types:
365 =item * Fixed length 8-bit (or less) encodings.
367 Each character is a single octet so may have a repertoire of up to
368 256 characters. ASCII and iso-8859-* are typical examples.
370 =item * Fixed length 16-bit encodings
372 Each character is two octets so may have a repertoire of up to
373 65 536 characters. Unicode's UCS-2 is an example. Also used for
374 encodings for East Asian languages.
376 =item * Fixed length 32-bit encodings.
378 Not really very "encoded" encodings. The Unicode code points
379 are just represented as 4-octet integers. None the less because
380 different architectures use different representations of integers
381 (so called "endian") there at least two disctinct encodings.
383 =item * Multi-byte encodings
385 The number of octets needed to represent a character varies.
386 UTF-8 is a particularly complex but regular case of a multi-byte
387 encoding. Several East Asian countries use a multi-byte encoding
388 where 1-octet is used to cover western roman characters and Asian
389 characters get 2-octets.
390 (UTF-16 is strictly a multi-byte encoding taking either 2 or 4 octets
391 to represent a Unicode code point.)
393 =item * "Escape" encodings.
395 These encodings embed "escape sequences" into the octet sequence
396 which describe how the following octets are to be interpreted.
397 The iso-2022-* family is typical. Following the escape sequence
398 octets are encoded by an "embedded" encoding (which will be one
399 of the above types) until another escape sequence switches to
400 a different "embedded" encoding.
402 These schemes are very flexible and can handle mixed languages but are
403 very complex to process (and have state). No escape encodings are
404 implemented for Perl yet.
408 =head2 Specifying Encodings
410 Encodings can be specified to the API described below in two ways:
416 Encoding names are strings with characters taken from a restricted
417 repertoire. See L</"Encoding Names">.
419 =item 2. As an object
421 Encoding objects are returned by C<find_encoding($name)>.
425 =head2 Encoding Names
427 Encoding names are case insensitive. White space in names is ignored.
428 In addition an encoding may have aliases. Each encoding has one
429 "canonical" name. The "canonical" name is chosen from the names of
430 the encoding by picking the first in the following sequence:
434 =item * The MIME name as defined in IETF RFCs.
436 =item * The name in the IANA registry.
438 =item * The name used by the organization that defined it.
442 Because of all the alias issues, and because in the general case
443 encodings have state C<Encode> uses the encoding object internally
444 once an operation is in progress.
446 As of Perl 5.8.0, at least the following encodings are recognized
447 (the => marks aliases):
461 The ISO 8859 and KOI:
463 ISO 8859-1 ISO 8859-6 ISO 8859-11 KOI8-F
464 ISO 8859-2 ISO 8859-7 (12 doesn't exist) KOI8-R
465 ISO 8859-3 ISO 8859-8 ISO 8859-13 KOI8-U
466 ISO 8859-4 ISO 8859-9 ISO 8859-14
467 ISO 8859-5 ISO 8859-10 ISO 8859-15
470 Latin1 => 8859-1 Latin6 => 8859-10
471 Latin2 => 8859-2 Latin7 => 8859-13
472 Latin3 => 8859-3 Latin8 => 8859-14
473 Latin4 => 8859-4 Latin9 => 8859-15
474 Latin5 => 8859-9 Latin10 => 8859-16
483 The CJKV: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese:
485 ISO 2022 ISO 2022 JP-1 JIS 0201 GB 1988 Big5 EUC-CN
486 ISO 2022 CN ISO 2022 JP-2 JIS 0208 GB 2312 HZ EUC-JP
487 ISO 2022 JP ISO 2022 KR JIS 0210 GB 12345 CNS 11643 EUC-JP-0212
493 CP37 CP852 CP861 CP866 CP949 CP1251 CP1256
494 CP424 CP855 CP862 CP869 CP950 CP1252 CP1257
495 CP737 CP856 CP863 CP874 CP1006 CP1253 CP1258
496 CP775 CP857 CP864 CP932 CP1047 CP1254
497 CP850 CP860 CP865 CP936 CP1250 CP1255
501 WinCyrillic => CP1251
503 WinTurkiskh => CP1254
507 WinVietnamese => CP1258
509 (All the CPI<NNN...> are available also as IBMI<NNN...>.)
513 MacCentralEuropean MacJapanese
515 MacCyrillic MacRomanian
518 MacIcelandic MacTurkish
529 =head1 PERL ENCODING API
531 =head2 Generic Encoding Interface
537 $bytes = encode(ENCODING, $string[, CHECK])
539 Encodes string from Perl's internal form into I<ENCODING> and returns
540 a sequence of octets. For CHECK see L</"Handling Malformed Data">.
542 For example to convert (internally UTF-8 encoded) Unicode data
545 $octets = encode("utf8", $unicode);
549 $string = decode(ENCODING, $bytes[, CHECK])
551 Decode sequence of octets assumed to be in I<ENCODING> into Perl's
552 internal form and returns the resulting string. For CHECK see
553 L</"Handling Malformed Data">.
555 For example to convert ISO 8859-1 data to UTF-8:
557 $utf8 = decode("latin1", $latin1);
561 from_to($string, FROM_ENCODING, TO_ENCODING[, CHECK])
563 Convert B<in-place> the data between two encodings. How did the data
564 in $string originally get to be in FROM_ENCODING? Either using
565 encode() or through PerlIO: See L</"Encoding and IO">. For CHECK
566 see L</"Handling Malformed Data">.
568 For example to convert ISO 8859-1 data to UTF-8:
570 from_to($data, "iso-8859-1", "utf-8");
572 and to convert it back:
574 from_to($data, "utf-8", "iso-8859-1");
576 Note that because the conversion happens in place, the data to be
577 converted cannot be a string constant, it must be a scalar variable.
581 =head2 Handling Malformed Data
583 If CHECK is not set, C<undef> is returned. If the data is supposed to
584 be UTF-8, an optional lexical warning (category utf8) is given. If
585 CHECK is true but not a code reference, dies.
587 It would desirable to have a way to indicate that transform should use
588 the encodings "replacement character" - no such mechanism is defined yet.
590 It is also planned to allow I<CHECK> to be a code reference.
592 This is not yet implemented as there are design issues with what its
593 arguments should be and how it returns its results.
599 Passed remaining fragment of string being processed.
600 Modifies it in place to remove bytes/characters it can understand
601 and returns a string used to represent them.
605 my $ch = substr($_[0],0,1,'');
606 return sprintf("\x{%02X}",ord($ch);
609 This scheme is close to how underlying C code for Encode works, but gives
610 the fixup routine very little context.
614 Passed original string, and an index into it of the problem area, and
615 output string so far. Appends what it will to output string and
616 returns new index into original string. For example:
619 # my ($s,$i,$d) = @_;
620 my $ch = substr($_[0],$_[1],1);
621 $_[2] .= sprintf("\x{%02X}",ord($ch);
625 This scheme gives maximal control to the fixup routine but is more
626 complicated to code, and may need internals of Encode to be tweaked to
627 keep original string intact.
633 Multiple return values rather than in-place modifications.
635 Index into the string could be pos($str) allowing s/\G...//.
641 The Unicode consortium defines the UTF-8 standard as a way of encoding
642 the entire Unicode repertiore as sequences of octets. This encoding is
643 expected to become very widespread. Perl can use this form internaly
644 to represent strings, so conversions to and from this form are
645 particularly efficient (as octets in memory do not have to change,
646 just the meta-data that tells Perl how to treat them).
652 $bytes = encode_utf8($string);
654 The characters that comprise string are encoded in Perl's superset of UTF-8
655 and the resulting octets returned as a sequence of bytes. All possible
656 characters have a UTF-8 representation so this function cannot fail.
660 $string = decode_utf8($bytes [,CHECK]);
662 The sequence of octets represented by $bytes is decoded from UTF-8
663 into a sequence of logical characters. Not all sequences of octets
664 form valid UTF-8 encodings, so it is possible for this call to fail.
665 For CHECK see L</"Handling Malformed Data">.
669 =head2 Other Encodings of Unicode
671 UTF-16 is similar to UCS-2, 16 bit or 2-byte chunks. UCS-2 can only
672 represent 0..0xFFFF, while UTF-16 has a I<surrogate pair> scheme which
673 allows it to cover the whole Unicode range.
675 Surrogates are code points set aside to encode the 0x01000..0x10FFFF
676 range of Unicode code points in pairs of 16-bit units. The I<high
677 surrogates> are the range 0xD800..0xDBFF, and the I<low surrogates>
678 are the range 0xDC00..0xDFFFF. The surrogate encoding is
680 $hi = ($uni - 0x10000) / 0x400 + 0xD800;
681 $lo = ($uni - 0x10000) % 0x400 + 0xDC00;
685 $uni = 0x10000 + ($hi - 0xD8000) * 0x400 + ($lo - 0xDC00);
687 Encode implements big-endian UCS-2 aliased to "iso-10646-1" as that
688 happens to be the name used by that representation when used with X11
691 UTF-32 or UCS-4 is 32-bit or 4-byte chunks. Perl's logical characters
692 can be considered as being in this form without encoding. An encoding
693 to transfer strings in this form (e.g. to write them to a file) would
696 pack('L*', unpack('U*', $string)); # native
698 pack('V*', unpack('U*', $string)); # little-endian
700 pack('N*', unpack('U*', $string)); # big-endian
702 depending on the endianness required.
704 No UTF-32 encodings are implemented yet.
706 Both UCS-2 and UCS-4 style encodings can have "byte order marks" by
707 representing the code point 0xFFFE as the very first thing in a file.
709 =head2 Listing available encodings
711 use Encode qw(encodings);
714 Returns a list of the canonical names of the available encodings.
716 =head2 Defining Aliases
718 use Encode qw(define_alias);
719 define_alias( newName => ENCODING);
721 Allows newName to be used as am alias for ENCODING. ENCODING may be
722 either the name of an encoding or and encoding object (as above).
724 Currently I<newName> can be specified in the following ways:
728 =item As a simple string.
730 =item As a qr// compiled regular expression, e.g.:
732 define_alias( qr/^iso8859-(\d+)$/i => '"iso-8859-$1"' );
734 In this case if I<ENCODING> is not a reference it is C<eval>-ed to
735 allow C<$1> etc. to be subsituted. The example is one way to names as
736 used in X11 font names to alias the MIME names for the iso-8859-*
739 =item As a code reference, e.g.:
741 define_alias( sub { return /^iso8859-(\d+)$/i ? "iso-8859-$1" : undef } , '');
743 In this case C<$_> will be set to the name that is being looked up and
744 I<ENCODING> is passed to the sub as its first argument. The example
745 is another way to names as used in X11 font names to alias the MIME
746 names for the iso-8859-* family.
750 =head2 Defining Encodings
752 use Encode qw(define_alias);
753 define_encoding( $object, 'canonicalName' [,alias...]);
755 Causes I<canonicalName> to be associated with I<$object>. The object
756 should provide the interface described in L</"IMPLEMENTATION CLASSES">
757 below. If more than two arguments are provided then additional
758 arguments are taken as aliases for I<$object> as for C<define_alias>.
760 =head1 Encoding and IO
762 It is very common to want to do encoding transformations when
763 reading or writing files, network connections, pipes etc.
764 If Perl is configured to use the new 'perlio' IO system then
765 C<Encode> provides a "layer" (See L<perliol>) which can transform
766 data as it is read or written.
768 Here is how the blind poet would modernise the encoding:
771 open(my $iliad,'<:encoding(iso-8859-7)','iliad.greek');
772 open(my $utf8,'>:utf8','iliad.utf8');
778 In addition the new IO system can also be configured to read/write
779 UTF-8 encoded characters (as noted above this is efficient):
781 open(my $fh,'>:utf8','anything');
782 print $fh "Any \x{0021} string \N{SMILEY FACE}\n";
784 Either of the above forms of "layer" specifications can be made the default
785 for a lexical scope with the C<use open ...> pragma. See L<open>.
787 Once a handle is open is layers can be altered using C<binmode>.
789 Without any such configuration, or if Perl itself is built using
790 system's own IO, then write operations assume that file handle accepts
791 only I<bytes> and will C<die> if a character larger than 255 is
792 written to the handle. When reading, each octet from the handle
793 becomes a byte-in-a-character. Note that this default is the same
794 behaviour as bytes-only languages (including Perl before v5.6) would
795 have, and is sufficient to handle native 8-bit encodings
796 e.g. iso-8859-1, EBCDIC etc. and any legacy mechanisms for handling
797 other encodings and binary data.
799 In other cases it is the programs responsibility to transform
800 characters into bytes using the API above before doing writes, and to
801 transform the bytes read from a handle into characters before doing
802 "character operations" (e.g. C<lc>, C</\W+/>, ...).
804 You can also use PerlIO to convert larger amounts of data you don't
805 want to bring into memory. For example to convert between ISO 8859-1
806 (Latin 1) and UTF-8 (or UTF-EBCDIC in EBCDIC machines):
808 open(F, "<:encoding(iso-8859-1)", "data.txt") or die $!;
809 open(G, ">:utf8", "data.utf") or die $!;
810 while (<F>) { print G }
812 # Could also do "print G <F>" but that would pull
813 # the whole file into memory just to write it out again.
817 open(my $f, "<:encoding(cp1252)")
818 open(my $g, ">:encoding(iso-8859-2)")
819 open(my $h, ">:encoding(latin9)") # iso-8859-15
821 See L<PerlIO> for more information.
823 See also L<encoding> for how to change the default encoding of the
826 =head1 Encoding How to ...
832 =item * IO with mixed content (faking iso-2020-*)
834 =item * MIME's Content-Length:
836 =item * UTF-8 strings in binary data.
838 =item * Perl/Encode wrappers on non-Unicode XS modules.
842 =head1 Messing with Perl's Internals
844 The following API uses parts of Perl's internals in the current
845 implementation. As such they are efficient, but may change.
849 =item * is_utf8(STRING [, CHECK])
851 [INTERNAL] Test whether the UTF-8 flag is turned on in the STRING.
852 If CHECK is true, also checks the data in STRING for being well-formed
853 UTF-8. Returns true if successful, false otherwise.
855 =item * valid_utf8(STRING)
857 [INTERNAL] Test whether STRING is in a consistent state. Will return
858 true if string is held as bytes, or is well-formed UTF-8 and has the
859 UTF-8 flag on. Main reason for this routine is to allow Perl's
860 testsuite to check that operations have left strings in a consistent
867 [INTERNAL] Turn on the UTF-8 flag in STRING. The data in STRING is
868 B<not> checked for being well-formed UTF-8. Do not use unless you
869 B<know> that the STRING is well-formed UTF-8. Returns the previous
870 state of the UTF-8 flag (so please don't test the return value as
871 I<not> success or failure), or C<undef> if STRING is not a string.
877 [INTERNAL] Turn off the UTF-8 flag in STRING. Do not use frivolously.
878 Returns the previous state of the UTF-8 flag (so please don't test the
879 return value as I<not> success or failure), or C<undef> if STRING is
884 =head1 IMPLEMENTATION CLASSES
886 As mentioned above encodings are (in the current implementation at least)
887 defined by objects. The mapping of encoding name to object is via the
890 The values of the hash can currently be either strings or objects.
891 The string form may go away in the future. The string form occurs
892 when C<encodings()> has scanned C<@INC> for loadable encodings but has
893 not actually loaded the encoding in question. This is because the
894 current "loading" process is all Perl and a bit slow.
896 Once an encoding is loaded then value of the hash is object which
897 implements the encoding. The object should provide the following
904 Should return the string representing the canonical name of the encoding.
906 =item -E<gt>new_sequence
908 This is a placeholder for encodings with state. It should return an
909 object which implements this interface, all current implementations
910 return the original object.
912 =item -E<gt>encode($string,$check)
914 Should return the octet sequence representing I<$string>. If I<$check>
915 is true it should modify I<$string> in place to remove the converted
916 part (i.e. the whole string unless there is an error). If an error
917 occurs it should return the octet sequence for the fragment of string
918 that has been converted, and modify $string in-place to remove the
919 converted part leaving it starting with the problem fragment.
921 If check is is false then C<encode> should make a "best effort" to
922 convert the string - for example by using a replacement character.
924 =item -E<gt>decode($octets,$check)
926 Should return the string that I<$octets> represents. If I<$check> is
927 true it should modify I<$octets> in place to remove the converted part
928 (i.e. the whole sequence unless there is an error). If an error
929 occurs it should return the fragment of string that has been
930 converted, and modify $octets in-place to remove the converted part
931 leaving it starting with the problem fragment.
933 If check is is false then C<decode> should make a "best effort" to
934 convert the string - for example by using Unicode's "\x{FFFD}" as a
935 replacement character.
939 It should be noted that the check behaviour is different from the
940 outer public API. The logic is that the "unchecked" case is useful
941 when encoding is part of a stream which may be reporting errors
942 (e.g. STDERR). In such cases it is desirable to get everything
943 through somehow without causing additional errors which obscure the
944 original one. Also the encoding is best placed to know what the
945 correct replacement character is, so if that is the desired behaviour
946 then letting low level code do it is the most efficient.
948 In contrast if check is true, the scheme above allows the encoding to
949 do as much as it can and tell layer above how much that was. What is
950 lacking at present is a mechanism to report what went wrong. The most
951 likely interface will be an additional method call to the object, or
952 perhaps (to avoid forcing per-stream objects on otherwise stateless
953 encodings) and additional parameter.
955 It is also highly desirable that encoding classes inherit from
956 C<Encode::Encoding> as a base class. This allows that class to define
957 additional behaviour for all encoding objects. For example built in
958 Unicode, UCS-2 and UTF-8 classes use :
960 package Encode::MyEncoding;
961 use base qw(Encode::Encoding);
963 __PACKAGE__->Define(qw(myCanonical myAlias));
965 To create an object with bless {Name => ...},$class, and call
966 define_encoding. They inherit their C<name> method from
969 =head2 Compiled Encodings
971 F<Encode.xs> provides a class C<Encode::XS> which provides the
972 interface described above. It calls a generic octet-sequence to
973 octet-sequence "engine" that is driven by tables (defined in
974 F<encengine.c>). The same engine is used for both encode and
975 decode. C<Encode:XS>'s C<encode> forces Perl's characters to their
976 UTF-8 form and then treats them as just another multibyte
977 encoding. C<Encode:XS>'s C<decode> transforms the sequence and then
978 turns the UTF-8-ness flag as that is the form that the tables are
979 defined to produce. For details of the engine see the comments in
982 The tables are produced by the Perl script F<compile> (the name needs
983 to change so we can eventually install it somewhere). F<compile> can
984 currently read two formats:
990 This is a coined format used by Tcl. It is documented in
991 Encode/EncodeFormat.pod.
995 This is the semi-standard format used by IBM's ICU package.
999 F<compile> can write the following forms:
1005 See above - the F<Encode/*.ucm> files provided with the distribution have
1006 been created from the original Tcl .enc files using this approach.
1010 Produces tables as C data structures - this is used to build in encodings
1011 into F<Encode.so>/F<Encode.dll>.
1015 In theory this allows encodings to be stand-alone loadable Perl
1016 extensions. The process has not yet been tested. The plan is to use
1017 this approach for large East Asian encodings.
1021 The set of encodings built-in to F<Encode.so>/F<Encode.dll> is
1022 determined by F<Makefile.PL>. The current set is as follows:
1026 =item ascii and iso-8859-*
1028 That is all the common 8-bit "western" encodings.
1030 =item IBM-1047 and two other variants of EBCDIC.
1032 These are the same variants that are supported by EBCDIC Perl as
1033 "native" encodings. They are included to prove "reversibility" of
1034 some constructs in EBCDIC Perl.
1036 =item symbol and dingbats as used by Tk on X11.
1038 (The reason Encode got started was to support Perl/Tk.)
1042 That set is rather ad hoc and has been driven by the needs of the
1043 tests rather than the needs of typical applications. It is likely
1048 L<perlunicode>, L<perlebcdic>, L<perlfunc/open>, L<PerlIO>, L<encoding>