Returns the character represented by that NUMBER in the character set.
For example, C<chr(65)> is C<"A"> in either ASCII or Unicode, and
-chr(0x263a) is a Unicode smiley face. Note that characters from 127
-to 255 (inclusive) are by default not encoded in Unicode for backward
-compatibility reasons (but see L<encoding>).
+chr(0x263a) is a Unicode smiley face. Note that characters from 128
+to 255 (inclusive) are by default not encoded in UTF-8 Unicode for
+backward compatibility reasons (but see L<encoding>).
If NUMBER is omitted, uses C<$_>.
}
You may also, in the Bourne shell tradition, specify an EXPR beginning
-with C<< '>&' >>, in which case the rest of the string is interpreted as the
-name of a filehandle (or file descriptor, if numeric) to be
-duped and opened. You may use C<&> after C<< > >>, C<<< >> >>>,
-C<< < >>, C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, and C<< +< >>. The
-mode you specify should match the mode of the original filehandle.
-(Duping a filehandle does not take into account any existing contents of
-IO buffers.) If you use the 3 arg form then you can pass either a number,
-the name of a filehandle or the normal "reference to a glob".
+with C<< '>&' >>, in which case the rest of the string is interpreted
+as the name of a filehandle (or file descriptor, if numeric) to be
+duped (as L<dup(2)>) and opened. You may use C<&> after C<< > >>,
+C<<< >> >>>, C<< < >>, C<< +> >>, C<<< +>> >>>, and C<< +< >>.
+The mode you specify should match the mode of the original filehandle.
+(Duping a filehandle does not take into account any existing contents
+of IO buffers.) If you use the 3 arg form then you can pass either a
+number, the name of a filehandle or the normal "reference to a glob".
Here is a script that saves, redirects, and restores C<STDOUT> and
C<STDERR> using various methods:
print STDOUT "stdout 2\n";
print STDERR "stderr 2\n";
-If you specify C<< '<&=N' >>, where C<N> is a number, then Perl will
-do an equivalent of C's C<fdopen> of that file descriptor; this is
-more parsimonious of file descriptors. For example:
+If you specify C<< '<&=X' >>, where C<X> is a file descriptor number
+or a filehandle, then Perl will do an equivalent of C's C<fdopen> of
+that file descriptor (and not call L<dup(2)>); this is more
+parsimonious of file descriptors. For example:
+ # open for input, reusing the fileno of $fd
open(FILEHANDLE, "<&=$fd")
or
open(FILEHANDLE, "<&=", $fd)
-Note that if Perl is using the standard C libraries' fdopen() then on
-many UNIX systems, fdopen() is known to fail when file descriptors
-exceed a certain value, typically 255. If you need more file
-descriptors than that, consider rebuilding Perl to use the C<PerlIO>.
+or
+
+ # open for append, using the fileno of OLDFH
+ open(FH, ">>&=", OLDFH)
+
+or
+
+ open(FH, ">>&=OLDFH")
+
+Being parsimonious on filehandles is also useful (besides being
+parsimonious) for example when something is dependent on file
+descriptors, like for example locking using flock(). If you do just
+C<< open(A, '>>&B') >>, the filehandle A will not have the same file
+descriptor as B, and therefore flock(A) will not flock(B), and vice
+versa. But with C<< open(A, '>>&=B') >> the filehandles will share
+the same file descriptor.
+
+Note that if you are using Perls older than 5.8.0, Perl will be using
+the standard C libraries' fdopen() to implement the "=" functionality.
+On many UNIX systems fdopen() fails when file descriptors exceed a
+certain value, typically 255. For Perls 5.8.0 and later, PerlIO is
+most often the default.
You can see whether Perl has been compiled with PerlIO or not by
running C<perl -V> and looking for C<useperlio=> line. If C<useperlio>
=item *
-If the pattern begins with a C<U>, the resulting string will be treated
-as Unicode-encoded. You can force UTF8 encoding on in a string with an
-initial C<U0>, and the bytes that follow will be interpreted as Unicode
-characters. If you don't want this to happen, you can begin your pattern
-with C<C0> (or anything else) to force Perl not to UTF8 encode your
-string, and then follow this with a C<U*> somewhere in your pattern.
+If the pattern begins with a C<U>, the resulting string will be
+treated as UTF-8-encoded Unicode. You can force UTF-8 encoding on in a
+string with an initial C<U0>, and the bytes that follow will be
+interpreted as Unicode characters. If you don't want this to happen,
+you can begin your pattern with C<C0> (or anything else) to force Perl
+not to UTF-8 encode your string, and then follow this with a C<U*>
+somewhere in your pattern.
=item *
You can check all the failure possibilities by inspecting
C<$?> like this:
- $exit_value = $? >> 8;
- $signal_num = $? & 127;
- $dumped_core = $? & 128;
+ if ($? == -1) {
+ print "failed to execute: $!\n";
+ }
+ elsif ($? & 127) {
+ printf "child died with signal %d, %s coredump\n",
+ ($? & 127), ($? & 128) ? 'with' : 'without';
+ }
+ else {
+ printf "child exited with value %d\n", $? >> 8;
+ }
+
or more portably by using the W*() calls of the POSIX extension;
see L<perlport> for more information.
to try to write off the beginning of the string (i.e. negative OFFSET).
The string should not contain any character with the value > 255 (which
-can only happen if you're using UTF8 encoding). If it does, it will be
-treated as something which is not UTF8 encoded. When the C<vec> was
+can only happen if you're using UTF-8 encoding). If it does, it will be
+treated as something which is not UTF-8 encoded. When the C<vec> was
assigned to, other parts of your program will also no longer consider the
-string to be UTF8 encoded. In other words, if you do have such characters
+string to be UTF-8 encoded. In other words, if you do have such characters
in your string, vec() will operate on the actual byte string, and not the
conceptual character string.