However, as a compatibility measure, this pragma must be explicitly used
to enable recognition of UTF-8 encoded literals and identifiers in the
-source text.
+source text on ASCII based machines or recognize UTF-EBCDIC encoded literals
+and identifiers on EBCDIC based machines.
=back
Beginning with version 5.6, Perl uses logically wide characters to
represent strings internally. This internal representation of strings
-uses the UTF-8 encoding.
+uses either the UTF-8 or the UTF-EBCDIC encoding.
In future, Perl-level operations can be expected to work with characters
rather than bytes, in general.
byte semantics in a particular lexical scope. See L<bytes>.
The C<utf8> pragma is primarily a compatibility device that enables
-recognition of UTF-8 in literals encountered by the parser. It may also
+recognition of UTF-(8|EBCDIC) in literals encountered by the parser. It may also
be used for enabling some of the more experimental Unicode support features.
Note that this pragma is only required until a future version of Perl
in which character semantics will become the default. This pragma may
no difference, because UTF-8 stores ASCII in single bytes, but for
any character greater than C<chr(127)>, the character may be stored in
a sequence of two or more bytes, all of which have the high bit set.
+For C1 controls or Latin 1 characters on an EBCDIC platform the character
+may be stored in a UTF-EBCDIC multi byte sequence.
But by and large, the user need not worry about this, because Perl
hides it from the user. A character in Perl is logically just a number
ranging from 0 to 2**32 or so. Larger characters encode to longer
larger than 255.
Presuming you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, such characters
-will typically occur directly within the literal strings as UTF-8
+will typically occur directly within the literal strings as UTF-(8|EBCDIC)
characters, but you can also specify a particular character with an
-extension of the C<\x> notation. UTF-8 characters are specified by
+extension of the C<\x> notation. UTF-X characters are specified by
putting the hexadecimal code within curlies after the C<\x>. For instance,
a Unicode smiley face is C<\x{263A}>.
classes via the new C<\p{}> (matches property) and C<\P{}> (doesn't
match property) constructs. For instance, C<\p{Lu}> matches any
character with the Unicode uppercase property, while C<\p{M}> matches
-any mark character. Single letter properties may omit the brackets, so
-that can be written C<\pM> also. Many predefined character classes are
-available, such as C<\p{IsMirrored}> and C<\p{InTibetan}>.
+any mark character. Single letter properties may omit the brackets,
+so that can be written C<\pM> also. Many predefined character classes
+are available, such as C<\p{IsMirrored}> and C<\p{InTibetan}>. The
+names of the C<In> classes are the official Unicode block names but
+with all non-alphanumeric characters removed, for example the block
+name C<"Latin-1 Supplement"> becomes C<\p{InLatin1Supplement}>.
=item *
=head2 Character encodings for input and output
-[XXX: This feature is not yet implemented.]
+See L<Encode>.
=head1 CAVEATS
As of yet, there is no method for automatically coercing input and
-output to some encoding other than UTF-8. This is planned in the near
-future, however.
+output to some encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC. This is planned
+in the near future, however.
Whether an arbitrary piece of data will be treated as "characters" or
"bytes" by internal operations cannot be divined at the current time.
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff