=item C<use utf8> still needed to enable UTF-8/UTF-EBCDIC in scripts
-The C<utf8> pragma implements the tables used for Unicode support.
-However, these tables are automatically loaded on demand, so the
-C<utf8> pragma should not normally be used.
-
As a compatibility measure, this pragma must be explicitly used to
enable recognition of UTF-8 in the Perl scripts themselves on ASCII
-based machines or recognize UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC based machines.
+based machines, or to recognize UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC based machines.
B<NOTE: this should be the only place where an explicit C<use utf8>
is needed>.
=head2 Byte and Character semantics
Beginning with version 5.6, Perl uses logically wide characters to
-represent strings internally. This internal representation of strings
-uses either the UTF-8 or the UTF-EBCDIC encoding.
+represent strings internally.
In future, Perl-level operations can be expected to work with
characters rather than bytes, in general.
Thus, character semantics for these operations apply transparently; if
the input data came from a Unicode source (for example, by adding a
character encoding discipline to the filehandle whence it came, or a
-literal UTF-8 string constant in the program), character semantics
+literal Unicode string constant in the program), character semantics
apply; otherwise, byte semantics are in effect. To force byte semantics
on Unicode data, the C<bytes> pragma should be used.
Notice that if you concatenate strings with byte semantics and strings
with Unicode character data, the bytes will by default be upgraded
I<as if they were ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1)> (or if in EBCDIC, after a
-translation to ISO 8859-1). To change this, use the C<encoding>
+translation to ISO 8859-1). This is done without regard to the
+system's native 8-bit encoding, so to change this for systems with
+non-Latin-1 (or non-EBCDIC) native encodings, use the C<encoding>
pragma, see L<encoding>.
Under character semantics, many operations that formerly operated on
-bytes change to operating on characters. For ASCII data this makes no
-difference, because UTF-8 stores ASCII in single bytes, but for any
-character greater than C<chr(127)>, the character B<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 sequences
-of bytes internally, but again, this is just an internal detail which
-is hidden at the Perl level.
+bytes change to operating on characters. A character in Perl is
+logically just a number ranging from 0 to 2**31 or so. Larger
+characters may encode to longer sequences of bytes internally, but
+this is just an internal detail which is hidden at the Perl level.
+See L<perluniintro> for more on this.
=head2 Effects of character semantics
=item *
-Strings and patterns may contain characters that have an ordinal value
-larger than 255.
+Strings (including hash keys) and regular expression patterns may
+contain characters that have an ordinal value larger than 255.
+
+If you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, Unicode characters
+may occur directly within the literal strings in one of the various
+Unicode encodings (UTF-8, UTF-EBCDIC, UCS-2, etc.), but are recognized
+as such (and converted to Perl's internal representation) only if the
+appropriate L<encoding> is specified.
+
+You can also get Unicode characters into a string by using the C<\x{...}>
+notation, putting the Unicode code for the desired character, in
+hexadecimal, into the curlies. For instance, a smiley face is C<\x{263A}>.
+This works only for characters with a code 0x100 and above.
+
+Additionally, if you
+
+ use charnames ':full';
-Presuming you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, such
-characters will typically occur directly within the literal strings as
-UTF-8 (or UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC platforms) characters, but you can also
-specify a particular character with an 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}>.
+you can use the C<\N{...}> notation, putting the official Unicode character
+name within the curlies. For example, C<\N{WHITE SMILING FACE}>.
+This works for all characters that have names.
=item *
-Identifiers within the Perl script may contain Unicode alphanumeric
-characters, including ideographs. (You are currently on your own when
-it comes to using the canonical forms of characters--Perl doesn't
-(yet) attempt to canonicalize variable names for you.)
+If an appropriate L<encoding> is specified, identifiers within the
+Perl script may contain Unicode alphanumeric characters, including
+ideographs. (You are currently on your own when it comes to using the
+canonical forms of characters--Perl doesn't (yet) attempt to
+canonicalize variable names for you.)
=item *
=item *
-Named Unicode properties and block ranges may be used as character
-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}>.
-
-The C<\p{Is...}> test for "general properties" such as "letter",
-"digit", while the C<\p{In...}> test for Unicode scripts and blocks.
+Named Unicode properties, scripts, and block ranges may be used like
+character 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 "Lu" (Letter, uppercase) property, while
+C<\p{M}> matches any character with a "M" (mark -- accents and such)
+property. Single letter properties may omit the brackets, so that can be
+written C<\pM> also. Many predefined properties are available, such
+as C<\p{Mirrored}> and C<\p{Tibetan}>.
The official Unicode script and block names have spaces and dashes as
-separators, but for convenience you can have dashes, spaces, and
-underbars at every word division, and you need not care about correct
-casing. It is recommended, however, that for consistency you use the
-following naming: the official Unicode script, block, or property name
-(see below for the additional rules that apply to block names),
-with whitespace and dashes replaced with underbar, and the words
-"uppercase-first-lowercase-rest". That is, "Latin-1 Supplement"
-becomes "Latin_1_Supplement".
+separators, but for convenience you can have dashes, spaces, and underbars
+at every word division, and you need not care about correct casing. It is
+recommended, however, that for consistency you use the following naming:
+the official Unicode script, block, or property name (see below for the
+additional rules that apply to block names), with whitespace and dashes
+removed, and the words "uppercase-first-lowercase-rest". That is, "Latin-1
+Supplement" becomes "Latin1Supplement".
You can also negate both C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> by introducing a caret
-(^) between the first curly and the property name: C<\p{^In_Tamil}> is
-equal to C<\P{In_Tamil}>.
+(^) between the first curly and the property name: C<\p{^Tamil}> is
+equal to C<\P{Tamil}>.
-The C<In> and C<Is> can be left out: C<\p{Greek}> is equal to
-C<\p{In_Greek}>, C<\P{Pd}> is equal to C<\P{Pd}>.
+Here are the basic Unicode General Category properties, followed by their
+long form (you can use either, e.g. C<\p{Lu}> and C<\p{LowercaseLetter}>
+are identical).
Short Long
L Letter
- Lu Uppercase_Letter
- Ll Lowercase_Letter
- Lt Titlecase_Letter
- Lm Modifier_Letter
- Lo Other_Letter
+ Lu UppercaseLetter
+ Ll LowercaseLetter
+ Lt TitlecaseLetter
+ Lm ModifierLetter
+ Lo OtherLetter
M Mark
- Mn Nonspacing_Mark
- Mc Spacing_Mark
- Me Enclosing_Mark
+ Mn NonspacingMark
+ Mc SpacingMark
+ Me EnclosingMark
N Number
- Nd Decimal_Number
- Nl Letter_Number
- No Other_Number
+ Nd DecimalNumber
+ Nl LetterNumber
+ No OtherNumber
P Punctuation
- Pc Connector_Punctuation
- Pd Dash_Punctuation
- Ps Open_Punctuation
- Pe Close_Punctuation
- Pi Initial_Punctuation
+ Pc ConnectorPunctuation
+ Pd DashPunctuation
+ Ps OpenPunctuation
+ Pe ClosePunctuation
+ Pi InitialPunctuation
(may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage)
- Pf Final_Punctuation
+ Pf FinalPunctuation
(may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage)
- Po Other_Punctuation
+ Po OtherPunctuation
S Symbol
- Sm Math_Symbol
- Sc Currency_Symbol
- Sk Modifier_Symbol
- So Other_Symbol
+ Sm MathSymbol
+ Sc CurrencySymbol
+ Sk ModifierSymbol
+ So OtherSymbol
Z Separator
- Zs Space_Separator
- Zl Line_Separator
- Zp Paragraph_Separator
+ Zs SpaceSeparator
+ Zl LineSeparator
+ Zp ParagraphSeparator
C Other
Cc Control
Cf Format
- Cs Surrogate
- Co Private_Use
+ Cs Surrogate (not usable)
+ Co PrivateUse
Cn Unassigned
+The single-letter properties match all characters in any of the
+two-letter sub-properties starting with the same letter.
There's also C<L&> which is an alias for C<Ll>, C<Lu>, and C<Lt>.
-The following reserved ranges have C<In> tests:
-
- CJK_Ideograph_Extension_A
- CJK_Ideograph
- Hangul_Syllable
- Non_Private_Use_High_Surrogate
- Private_Use_High_Surrogate
- Low_Surrogate
- Private_Surrogate
- CJK_Ideograph_Extension_B
- Plane_15_Private_Use
- Plane_16_Private_Use
+Because Perl hides the need for the user to understand the internal
+representation of Unicode characters, it has no need to support the
+somewhat messy concept of surrogates. Therefore, the C<Cs> property is not
+supported.
-For example C<"\x{AC00}" =~ \p{HangulSyllable}> will test true.
-(Handling of surrogates is not implemented yet, because Perl
-uses UTF-8 and not UTF-16 internally to represent Unicode.
-So you really can't use the "Cs" category.)
+Because scripts differ in their directionality (for example Hebrew is
+written right to left), Unicode supplies these properties:
-Additionally, because scripts differ in their directionality
-(for example Hebrew is written right to left), all characters
-have their directionality defined:
+ Property Meaning
BidiL Left-to-Right
BidiLRE Left-to-Right Embedding
BidiWS Whitespace
BidiON Other Neutrals
+For example, C<\p{BidiR}> matches all characters that are normally
+written right to left.
+
=back
=head2 Scripts
-The scripts available for C<\p{In...}> and C<\P{In...}>, for example
-C<\p{InLatin}> or \p{InCyrillic>, are as follows:
+The scripts available via C<\p{...}> and C<\P{...}>, for example
+C<\p{Latin}> or C<\p{Cyrillic}>, are as follows:
Arabic
Armenian
Bengali
Bopomofo
- Canadian-Aboriginal
+ Buhid
+ CanadianAboriginal
Cherokee
Cyrillic
Deseret
Gurmukhi
Han
Hangul
+ Hanunoo
Hebrew
Hiragana
Inherited
Mongolian
Myanmar
Ogham
- Old-Italic
+ OldItalic
Oriya
Runic
Sinhala
Syriac
+ Tagalog
+ Tagbanwa
Tamil
Telugu
Thaana
There are also extended property classes that supplement the basic
properties, defined by the F<PropList> Unicode database:
- ASCII_Hex_Digit
- Bidi_Control
+ ASCIIHexDigit
+ BidiControl
Dash
+ Deprecated
Diacritic
Extender
- Hex_Digit
+ GraphemeLink
+ HexDigit
Hyphen
Ideographic
- Join_Control
- Noncharacter_Code_Point
- Other_Alphabetic
- Other_Lowercase
- Other_Math
- Other_Uppercase
- Quotation_Mark
- White_Space
+ IDSBinaryOperator
+ IDSTrinaryOperator
+ JoinControl
+ LogicalOrderException
+ NoncharacterCodePoint
+ OtherAlphabetic
+ OtherDefaultIgnorableCodePoint
+ OtherGraphemeExtend
+ OtherLowercase
+ OtherMath
+ OtherUppercase
+ QuotationMark
+ Radical
+ SoftDotted
+ TerminalPunctuation
+ UnifiedIdeograph
+ WhiteSpace
and further derived properties:
- Alphabetic Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Other_Alphabetic
- Lowercase Ll + Other_Lowercase
- Uppercase Lu + Other_Uppercase
- Math Sm + Other_Math
+ Alphabetic Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + OtherAlphabetic
+ Lowercase Ll + OtherLowercase
+ Uppercase Lu + OtherUppercase
+ Math Sm + OtherMath
ID_Start Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Nl
ID_Continue ID_Start + Mn + Mc + Nd + Pc
Any Any character
- Assigned Any non-Cn character
+ Assigned Any non-Cn character (i.e. synonym for \P{Cn})
+ Unassigned Synonym for \p{Cn}
Common Any character (or unassigned code point)
not explicitly assigned to a script
+For backward compatibility, all properties mentioned so far may have C<Is>
+prepended to their name (e.g. C<\P{IsLu}> is equal to C<\P{Lu}>).
+
=head2 Blocks
-In addition to B<scripts>, Unicode also defines B<blocks> of
-characters. The difference between scripts and blocks is that the
-scripts concept is closer to natural languages, while the blocks
-concept is more an artificial grouping based on groups of 256 Unicode
-characters. For example, the C<Latin> script contains letters from
-many blocks. On the other hand, the C<Latin> script does not contain
-all the characters from those blocks. It does not, for example, contain
-digits because digits are shared across many scripts. Digits and
-other similar groups, like punctuation, are in a category called
-C<Common>.
+In addition to B<scripts>, Unicode also defines B<blocks> of characters.
+The difference between scripts and blocks is that the scripts concept is
+closer to natural languages, while the blocks concept is more an artificial
+grouping based on groups of mostly 256 Unicode characters. For example, the
+C<Latin> script contains letters from many blocks. On the other hand, the
+C<Latin> script does not contain all the characters from those blocks. It
+does not, for example, contain digits because digits are shared across many
+scripts. Digits and other similar groups, like punctuation, are in a
+category called C<Common>.
For more about scripts, see the UTR #24:
http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt
-Because there are overlaps in naming (there are, for example, both
-a script called C<Katakana> and a block called C<Katakana>, the block
-version has C<Block> appended to its name, C<\p{InKatakanaBlock}>.
-
-Notice that this definition was introduced in Perl 5.8.0: in Perl
-5.6 only the blocks were used; in Perl 5.8.0 scripts became the
-preferential Unicode character class definition; this meant that
-the definitions of some character classes changed (the ones in the
-below list that have the C<Block> appended).
-
- Alphabetic Presentation Forms
- Arabic Block
- Arabic Presentation Forms-A
- Arabic Presentation Forms-B
- Armenian Block
- Arrows
- Basic Latin
- Bengali Block
- Block Elements
- Bopomofo Block
- Bopomofo Extended
- Box Drawing
- Braille Patterns
- Byzantine Musical Symbols
- CJK Compatibility
- CJK Compatibility Forms
- CJK Compatibility Ideographs
- CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement
- CJK Radicals Supplement
- CJK Symbols and Punctuation
- CJK Unified Ideographs
- CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A
- CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B
- Cherokee Block
- Combining Diacritical Marks
- Combining Half Marks
- Combining Marks for Symbols
- Control Pictures
- Currency Symbols
- Cyrillic Block
- Deseret Block
- Devanagari Block
- Dingbats
- Enclosed Alphanumerics
- Enclosed CJK Letters and Months
- Ethiopic Block
- General Punctuation
- Geometric Shapes
- Georgian Block
- Gothic Block
- Greek Block
- Greek Extended
- Gujarati Block
- Gurmukhi Block
- Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms
- Hangul Compatibility Jamo
- Hangul Jamo
- Hangul Syllables
- Hebrew Block
- High Private Use Surrogates
- High Surrogates
- Hiragana Block
- IPA Extensions
- Ideographic Description Characters
- Kanbun
- Kangxi Radicals
- Kannada Block
- Katakana Block
- Khmer Block
- Lao Block
- Latin 1 Supplement
- Latin Extended Additional
- Latin Extended-A
- Latin Extended-B
- Letterlike Symbols
- Low Surrogates
- Malayalam Block
- Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols
- Mathematical Operators
- Miscellaneous Symbols
- Miscellaneous Technical
- Mongolian Block
- Musical Symbols
- Myanmar Block
- Number Forms
- Ogham Block
- Old Italic Block
- Optical Character Recognition
- Oriya Block
- Private Use
- Runic Block
- Sinhala Block
- Small Form Variants
- Spacing Modifier Letters
- Specials
- Superscripts and Subscripts
- Syriac Block
- Tags
- Tamil Block
- Telugu Block
- Thaana Block
- Thai Block
- Tibetan Block
- Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics
- Yi Radicals
- Yi Syllables
+Blocks names are given with the C<In> prefix. For example, the
+Katakana block is referenced via C<\p{InKatakana}>. The C<In>
+prefix may be omitted if there is no naming conflict with a script
+or any other property, but it is recommended that C<In> always be used
+to avoid confusion.
+
+These block names are supported:
+
+ InAlphabeticPresentationForms
+ InArabic
+ InArabicPresentationFormsA
+ InArabicPresentationFormsB
+ InArmenian
+ InArrows
+ InBasicLatin
+ InBengali
+ InBlockElements
+ InBopomofo
+ InBopomofoExtended
+ InBoxDrawing
+ InBraillePatterns
+ InBuhid
+ InByzantineMusicalSymbols
+ InCJKCompatibility
+ InCJKCompatibilityForms
+ InCJKCompatibilityIdeographs
+ InCJKCompatibilityIdeographsSupplement
+ InCJKRadicalsSupplement
+ InCJKSymbolsAndPunctuation
+ InCJKUnifiedIdeographs
+ InCJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionA
+ InCJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionB
+ InCherokee
+ InCombiningDiacriticalMarks
+ InCombiningDiacriticalMarksforSymbols
+ InCombiningHalfMarks
+ InControlPictures
+ InCurrencySymbols
+ InCyrillic
+ InCyrillicSupplementary
+ InDeseret
+ InDevanagari
+ InDingbats
+ InEnclosedAlphanumerics
+ InEnclosedCJKLettersAndMonths
+ InEthiopic
+ InGeneralPunctuation
+ InGeometricShapes
+ InGeorgian
+ InGothic
+ InGreekExtended
+ InGreekAndCoptic
+ InGujarati
+ InGurmukhi
+ InHalfwidthAndFullwidthForms
+ InHangulCompatibilityJamo
+ InHangulJamo
+ InHangulSyllables
+ InHanunoo
+ InHebrew
+ InHighPrivateUseSurrogates
+ InHighSurrogates
+ InHiragana
+ InIPAExtensions
+ InIdeographicDescriptionCharacters
+ InKanbun
+ InKangxiRadicals
+ InKannada
+ InKatakana
+ InKatakanaPhoneticExtensions
+ InKhmer
+ InLao
+ InLatin1Supplement
+ InLatinExtendedA
+ InLatinExtendedAdditional
+ InLatinExtendedB
+ InLetterlikeSymbols
+ InLowSurrogates
+ InMalayalam
+ InMathematicalAlphanumericSymbols
+ InMathematicalOperators
+ InMiscellaneousMathematicalSymbolsA
+ InMiscellaneousMathematicalSymbolsB
+ InMiscellaneousSymbols
+ InMiscellaneousTechnical
+ InMongolian
+ InMusicalSymbols
+ InMyanmar
+ InNumberForms
+ InOgham
+ InOldItalic
+ InOpticalCharacterRecognition
+ InOriya
+ InPrivateUseArea
+ InRunic
+ InSinhala
+ InSmallFormVariants
+ InSpacingModifierLetters
+ InSpecials
+ InSuperscriptsAndSubscripts
+ InSupplementalArrowsA
+ InSupplementalArrowsB
+ InSupplementalMathematicalOperators
+ InSupplementaryPrivateUseAreaA
+ InSupplementaryPrivateUseAreaB
+ InSyriac
+ InTagalog
+ InTagbanwa
+ InTags
+ InTamil
+ InTelugu
+ InThaana
+ InThai
+ InTibetan
+ InUnifiedCanadianAboriginalSyllabics
+ InVariationSelectors
+ InYiRadicals
+ InYiSyllables
=over 4
=item *
-The special pattern C<\X> match matches any extended Unicode sequence
+The special pattern C<\X> matches any extended Unicode sequence
(a "combining character sequence" in Standardese), where the first
character is a base character and subsequent characters are mark
characters that apply to the base character. It is equivalent to
The C<pack()>/C<unpack()> letters "C<c>" and "C<C>" do I<not> change,
since they're often used for byte-oriented formats. (Again, think
"C<char>" in the C language.) However, there is a new "C<U>" specifier
-that will convert between UTF-8 characters and integers. (It works
-outside of the utf8 pragma too.)
+that will convert between Unicode characters and integers.
=item *
C<pack("U")> and C<unpack("U")>, not like C<pack("C")> and
C<unpack("C")>. In fact, the latter are how you now emulate
byte-oriented C<chr()> and C<ord()> for Unicode strings.
-(Note that this reveals the internal UTF-8 encoding of strings and
-you are not supposed to do that unless you know what you are doing.)
+(Note that this reveals the internal encoding of Unicode strings,
+which is not something one normally needs to care about at all.)
=item *
=back
-=head2 Character encodings for input and output
+=head2 User-defined Character Properties
-See L<Encode>.
+You can define your own character properties by defining subroutines
+that have names beginning with "In" or "Is". The subroutines must be
+visible in the package that uses the properties. The user-defined
+properties can be used in the regular expression C<\p> and C<\P>
+constructs.
+
+The subroutines must return a specially formatted string: one or more
+newline-separated lines. Each line must be one of the following:
+
+=over 4
-=head1 CAVEATS
+=item *
-As of yet, there is no method for automatically coercing input and
-output to some encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC. This is planned
-in the near future, however.
+Two hexadecimal numbers separated by horizontal whitespace (space or
+tabulator characters) denoting a range of Unicode codepoints to include.
-Whether an arbitrary piece of data will be treated as "characters" or
-"bytes" by internal operations cannot be divined at the current time.
+=item *
-Use of locales with utf8 may lead to odd results. Currently there is
-some attempt to apply 8-bit locale info to characters in the range
-0..255, but this is demonstrably incorrect for locales that use
-characters above that range (when mapped into Unicode). It will also
-tend to run slower. Avoidance of locales is strongly encouraged.
+Something to include, prefixed by "+": either an built-in character
+property (prefixed by "utf8::"), for all the characters in that
+property; or two hexadecimal codepoints for a range; or a single
+hexadecimal codepoint.
-=head1 UNICODE REGULAR EXPRESSION SUPPORT LEVEL
+=item *
+
+Something to exclude, prefixed by "-": either an existing character
+property (prefixed by "utf8::"), for all the characters in that
+property; or two hexadecimal codepoints for a range; or a single
+hexadecimal codepoint.
+
+=item *
+
+Something to negate, prefixed "!": either an existing character
+property (prefixed by "utf8::") for all the characters except the
+characters in the property; or two hexadecimal codepoints for a range;
+or a single hexadecimal codepoint.
+
+=back
+
+For example, to define a property that covers both the Japanese
+syllabaries (hiragana and katakana), you can define
+
+ sub InKana {
+ return <<END;
+ 3040\t309F
+ 30A0\t30FF
+ END
+ }
+
+Imagine that the here-doc end marker is at the beginning of the line.
+Now you can use C<\p{InKana}> and C<\P{InKana}>.
+
+You could also have used the existing block property names:
+
+ sub InKana {
+ return <<'END';
+ +utf8::InHiragana
+ +utf8::InKatakana
+ END
+ }
+
+Suppose you wanted to match only the allocated characters,
+not the raw block ranges: in other words, you want to remove
+the non-characters:
+
+ sub InKana {
+ return <<'END';
+ +utf8::InHiragana
+ +utf8::InKatakana
+ -utf8::IsCn
+ END
+ }
+
+The negation is useful for defining (surprise!) negated classes.
+
+ sub InNotKana {
+ return <<'END';
+ !utf8::InHiragana
+ -utf8::InKatakana
+ +utf8::IsCn
+ END
+ }
+
+=head2 Character encodings for input and output
+
+See L<Encode>.
+
+=head2 Unicode Regular Expression Support Level
The following list of Unicode regular expression support describes
feature by feature the Unicode support implemented in Perl as of Perl
Level 1 - Basic Unicode Support
2.1 Hex Notation - done [1]
- Named Notation - done [2]
+ Named Notation - done [2]
2.2 Categories - done [3][4]
2.3 Subtraction - MISSING [5][6]
2.4 Simple Word Boundaries - done [7]
[ 1] \x{...}
[ 2] \N{...}
- [ 3] . \p{Is...} \P{Is...}
+ [ 3] . \p{...} \P{...}
[ 4] now scripts (see UTR#24 Script Names) in addition to blocks
[ 5] have negation
- [ 6] can use look-ahead to emulate subtraction (*)
+ [ 6] can use regular expression look-ahead [a]
+ or user-defined character properties [b] to emulate subtraction
[ 7] include Letters in word characters
- [ 8] see UTR#21 Case Mappings: Perl implements 1:1 mappings
+ [ 8] note that perl does Full casefolding in matching, not Simple:
+ for example U+1F88 is equivalent with U+1F000 U+03B9,
+ not with 1F80. This difference matters for certain Greek
+ capital letters with certain modifiers: the Full casefolding
+ decomposes the letter, while the Simple casefolding would map
+ it to a single character.
[ 9] see UTR#13 Unicode Newline Guidelines
[10] should do ^ and $ also on \x{85}, \x{2028} and \x{2029})
(should also affect <>, $., and script line numbers)
-
-(*) You can mimic class subtraction using lookahead.
+ (the \x{85}, \x{2028} and \x{2029} do match \s)
+
+[a] You can mimic class subtraction using lookahead.
For example, what TR18 might write as
[{Greek}-[{UNASSIGNED}]]
in Perl can be written as:
- (?!\p{UNASSIGNED})\p{GreekBlock}
- (?=\p{ASSIGNED})\p{GreekBlock}
+ (?!\p{Unassigned})\p{InGreekAndCoptic}
+ (?=\p{Assigned})\p{InGreekAndCoptic}
But in this particular example, you probably really want
which will match assigned characters known to be part of the Greek script.
-In other words: the matched character must not be a non-assigned
-character, but it must be in the block of modern Greek characters.
+[b] See L</User-defined Character Properties>.
=item *
=over 4
-=item UTF-8
+=item *
+
+UTF-8
-UTF-8 is the encoding used internally by Perl. UTF-8 is a variable
-length (1 to 6 bytes, current character allocations require 4 bytes),
-byteorder independent encoding. For ASCII, UTF-8 is transparent
-(and we really do mean 7-bit ASCII, not any 8-bit encoding).
+UTF-8 is a variable-length (1 to 6 bytes, current character allocations
+require 4 bytes), byteorder independent encoding. For ASCII, UTF-8 is
+transparent (and we really do mean 7-bit ASCII, not another 8-bit encoding).
-The following table is from Unicode 3.1.
+The following table is from Unicode 3.2.
Code Points 1st Byte 2nd Byte 3rd Byte 4th Byte
- U+0000..U+007F 00..7F
- U+0080..U+07FF C2..DF 80..BF
+ U+0000..U+007F 00..7F
+ U+0080..U+07FF C2..DF 80..BF
U+0800..U+0FFF E0 A0..BF 80..BF
- U+1000..U+FFFF E1..EF 80..BF 80..BF
+ U+1000..U+CFFF E1..EC 80..BF 80..BF
+ U+D000..U+D7FF ED 80..9F 80..BF
+ U+D800..U+DFFF ******* ill-formed *******
+ U+E000..U+FFFF EE..EF 80..BF 80..BF
U+10000..U+3FFFF F0 90..BF 80..BF 80..BF
U+40000..U+FFFFF F1..F3 80..BF 80..BF 80..BF
U+100000..U+10FFFF F4 80..8F 80..BF 80..BF
+Note the A0..BF in U+0800..U+0FFF, the 80..9F in U+D000...U+D7FF,
+the 90..BF in U+10000..U+3FFFF, and the 80...8F in U+100000..U+10FFFF.
+The "gaps" are caused by legal UTF-8 avoiding non-shortest encodings:
+it is technically possible to UTF-8-encode a single code point in different
+ways, but that is explicitly forbidden, and the shortest possible encoding
+should always be used (and that is what Perl does).
+
Or, another way to look at it, as bits:
Code Points 1st Byte 2nd Byte 3rd Byte 4th Byte
00000dddccccccbbbbbbaaaaaa 11110ddd 10cccccc 10bbbbbb 10aaaaaa
As you can see, the continuation bytes all begin with C<10>, and the
-leading bits of the start byte tells how many bytes the are in the
+leading bits of the start byte tell how many bytes the are in the
encoded character.
-=item UTF-EBDIC
+=item *
+
+UTF-EBCDIC
-Like UTF-8, but EBDCIC-safe, as UTF-8 is ASCII-safe.
+Like UTF-8, but EBCDIC-safe, as UTF-8 is ASCII-safe.
-=item UTF-16, UTF-16BE, UTF16-LE, Surrogates, and BOMs (Byte Order Marks)
+=item *
+
+UTF-16, UTF-16BE, UTF16-LE, Surrogates, and BOMs (Byte Order Marks)
(The followings items are mostly for reference, Perl doesn't
use them internally.)
and the decoding is
- $uni = 0x10000 + ($hi - 0xD8000) * 0x400 + ($lo - 0xDC00);
+ $uni = 0x10000 + ($hi - 0xD800) * 0x400 + ($lo - 0xDC00);
If you try to generate surrogates (for example by using chr()), you
-will get an error because firstly a surrogate on its own is meaningless,
-and secondly because Perl encodes its Unicode characters in UTF-8
-(not 16-bit numbers), which makes the encoded character doubly illegal.
+will get a warning if warnings are turned on (C<-w> or C<use
+warnings;>) because those code points are not valid for a Unicode
+character.
Because of the 16-bitness, UTF-16 is byteorder dependent. UTF-16
itself can be used for in-memory computations, but if storage or
little-endian format" and cannot be "0xFFFE, represented in big-endian
format".
-=item UTF-32, UTF-32BE, UTF32-LE
+=item *
+
+UTF-32, UTF-32BE, UTF32-LE
The UTF-32 family is pretty much like the UTF-16 family, expect that
the units are 32-bit, and therefore the surrogate scheme is not
needed. The BOM signatures will be 0x00 0x00 0xFE 0xFF for BE and
0xFF 0xFE 0x00 0x00 for LE.
-=item UCS-2, UCS-4
+=item *
+
+UCS-2, UCS-4
Encodings defined by the ISO 10646 standard. UCS-2 is a 16-bit
-encoding, UCS-4 is a 32-bit encoding. Unlike UTF-16, UCS-2
-is not extensible beyond 0xFFFF, because it does not use surrogates.
+encoding. Unlike UTF-16, UCS-2 is not extensible beyond 0xFFFF,
+because it does not use surrogates. UCS-4 is a 32-bit encoding,
+functionally identical to UTF-32.
-=item UTF-7
+=item *
+
+UTF-7
A seven-bit safe (non-eight-bit) encoding, useful if the
transport/storage is not eight-bit safe. Defined by RFC 2152.
=back
-=head2 Security Implications of Malformed UTF-8
+=head2 Security Implications of Unicode
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+Malformed UTF-8
Unfortunately, the specification of UTF-8 leaves some room for
interpretation of how many bytes of encoded output one should generate
from one input Unicode character. Strictly speaking, one is supposed
to always generate the shortest possible sequence of UTF-8 bytes,
-because otherwise there is potential for input buffer overflow at the
-receiving end of a UTF-8 connection. Perl always generates the shortest
-length UTF-8, and with warnings on (C<-w> or C<use warnings;>) Perl will
-warn about non-shortest length UTF-8 (and other malformations, too,
-such as the surrogates, which are not real character code points.)
+because otherwise there is potential for input buffer overflow at
+the receiving end of a UTF-8 connection. Perl always generates the
+shortest length UTF-8, and with warnings on (C<-w> or C<use
+warnings;>) Perl will warn about non-shortest length UTF-8 (and other
+malformations, too, such as the surrogates, which are not real
+Unicode code points.)
+
+=item *
+
+Regular expressions behave slightly differently between byte data and
+character (Unicode data). For example, the "word character" character
+class C<\w> will work differently when the data is all eight-bit bytes
+or when the data is Unicode.
+
+In the first case, the set of C<\w> characters is either small (the
+default set of alphabetic characters, digits, and the "_"), or, if you
+are using a locale (see L<perllocale>), the C<\w> might contain a few
+more letters according to your language and country.
+
+In the second case, the C<\w> set of characters is much, much larger,
+and most importantly, even in the set of the first 256 characters, it
+will most probably be different: as opposed to most locales (which are
+specific to a language and country pair) Unicode classifies all the
+characters that are letters as C<\w>. For example: your locale might
+not think that LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH is a letter (unless you happen
+to speak Icelandic), but Unicode does.
+
+As discussed elsewhere, Perl tries to stand one leg (two legs, as
+camels are quadrupeds?) in two worlds: the old world of bytes and the new
+world of characters, upgrading from bytes to characters when necessary.
+If your legacy code is not explicitly using Unicode, no automatic
+switchover to characters should happen, and characters shouldn't get
+downgraded back to bytes, either. It is possible to accidentally mix
+bytes and characters, however (see L<perluniintro>), in which case the
+C<\w> might start behaving differently. Review your code.
+
+=back
=head2 Unicode in Perl on EBCDIC
the platform's "natural" 8-bit encoding of Unicode. See L<perlebcdic>
for more discussion of the issues.
+=head2 Locales
+
+Usually locale settings and Unicode do not affect each other, but
+there are a couple of exceptions:
+
+=over 4
+
+=item *
+
+If your locale environment variables (LANGUAGE, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LANG)
+contain the strings 'UTF-8' or 'UTF8' (case-insensitive matching),
+the default encoding of your STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR, and of
+B<any subsequent file open>, is UTF-8.
+
+=item *
+
+Perl tries really hard to work both with Unicode and the old byte
+oriented world: most often this is nice, but sometimes this causes
+problems.
+
+=back
+
=head2 Using Unicode in XS
If you want to handle Perl Unicode in XS extensions, you may find
-the following C APIs useful:
+the following C APIs useful (see perlapi for details):
=over 4
=item *
-DO_UTF8(sv) returns true if the UTF8 flag is on and the bytes
-pragma is not in effect. SvUTF8(sv) returns true is the UTF8
-flag is on, the bytes pragma is ignored. Remember that UTF8
-flag being on does not mean that there would be any characters
-of code points greater than 255 or 127 in the scalar, or that
-there even are any characters in the scalar. The UTF8 flag
-means that any characters added to the string will be encoded
-in UTF8 if the code points of the characters are greater than
-255. Not "if greater than 127", since Perl's Unicode model
-is not to use UTF-8 until it's really necessary.
+DO_UTF8(sv) returns true if the UTF8 flag is on and the bytes pragma
+is not in effect. SvUTF8(sv) returns true is the UTF8 flag is on, the
+bytes pragma is ignored. The UTF8 flag being on does B<not> mean that
+there are any characters of code points greater than 255 (or 127) in
+the scalar, or that there even are any characters in the scalar.
+What the UTF8 flag means is that the sequence of octets in the
+representation of the scalar is the sequence of UTF-8 encoded
+code points of the characters of a string. The UTF8 flag being
+off means that each octet in this representation encodes a single
+character with codepoint 0..255 within the string. Perl's Unicode
+model is not to use UTF-8 until it's really necessary.
=item *
=item *
-utf8_length(s, len) returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded buffer in
-characters. sv_len_utf8(sv) returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded
+utf8_length(start, end) returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded buffer
+in characters. sv_len_utf8(sv) returns the length of the UTF-8 encoded
scalar.
=item *
encoded form. sv_utf8_downgrade(sv) does the opposite (if possible).
sv_utf8_encode(sv) is like sv_utf8_upgrade but the UTF8 flag does not
get turned on. sv_utf8_decode() does the opposite of sv_utf8_encode().
+Note that none of these are to be used as general purpose encoding/decoding
+interfaces: use Encode for that. sv_utf8_upgrade() is affected by the
+encoding pragma, but sv_utf8_downgrade() is not (since the encoding
+pragma is designed to be a one-way street).
=item *
-is_utf8_char(buf) returns true if the buffer points to valid UTF-8.
+is_utf8_char(s) returns true if the pointer points to a valid UTF-8
+character.
=item *
UTF8SKIP(buf) will return the number of bytes in the UTF-8 encoded
character in the buffer. UNISKIP(chr) will return the number of bytes
-required to UTF-8-encode the Unicode character code point.
+required to UTF-8-encode the Unicode character code point. UTF8SKIP()
+is useful for example for iterating over the characters of a UTF-8
+encoded buffer; UNISKIP() is useful for example in computing
+the size required for a UTF-8 encoded buffer.
=item *
utf8_hop(s, off) will return a pointer to an UTF-8 encoded buffer that
is C<off> (positive or negative) Unicode characters displaced from the
-UTF-8 buffer C<s>.
+UTF-8 buffer C<s>. Be careful not to overstep the buffer: utf8_hop()
+will merrily run off the end or the beginning if told to do so.
=item *
pv_uni_display(dsv, spv, len, pvlim, flags) and sv_uni_display(dsv,
ssv, pvlim, flags) are useful for debug output of Unicode strings and
-scalars (only for debug: they display B<all> characters as hexadecimal
-code points).
+scalars. By default they are useful only for debug: they display
+B<all> characters as hexadecimal code points, but with the flags
+UNI_DISPLAY_ISPRINT and UNI_DISPLAY_BACKSLASH you can make the output
+more readable.
=item *
-ibcmp_utf8(s1, u1, len1, s2, u2, len2) can be used to compare two
-strings case-insensitively in Unicode. (For case-sensitive
-comparisons you can just use memEQ() and memNE() as usual.)
+ibcmp_utf8(s1, pe1, u1, l1, u1, s2, pe2, l2, u2) can be used to
+compare two strings case-insensitively in Unicode.
+(For case-sensitive comparisons you can just use memEQ() and memNE()
+as usual.)
=back
For more information, see L<perlapi>, and F<utf8.c> and F<utf8.h>
in the Perl source code distribution.
+=head1 BUGS
+
+=head2 Interaction with locales
+
+Use of locales with Unicode data may lead to odd results. Currently
+there is some attempt to apply 8-bit locale info to characters in the
+range 0..255, but this is demonstrably incorrect for locales that use
+characters above that range when mapped into Unicode. It will also
+tend to run slower. Use of locales with Unicode is discouraged.
+
+=head2 Interaction with extensions
+
+When perl exchanges data with an extension, the extension should be
+able to understand the UTF-8 flag and act accordingly. If the
+extension doesn't know about the flag, the risk is high that it will
+return data that are incorrectly flagged.
+
+So if you're working with Unicode data, consult the documentation of
+every module you're using if there are any issues with Unicode data
+exchange. If the documentation does not talk about Unicode at all,
+suspect the worst and probably look at the source to learn how the
+module is implemented. Modules written completely in perl shouldn't
+cause problems. Modules that directly or indirectly access code written
+in other programming languages are at risk.
+
+For affected functions the simple strategy to avoid data corruption is
+to always make the encoding of the exchanged data explicit. Choose an
+encoding you know the extension can handle. Convert arguments passed
+to the extensions to that encoding and convert results back from that
+encoding. Write wrapper functions that do the conversions for you, so
+you can later change the functions when the extension catches up.
+
+To provide an example let's say the popular Foo::Bar::escape_html
+function doesn't deal with Unicode data yet. The wrapper function
+would convert the argument to raw UTF-8 and convert the result back to
+perl's internal representation like so:
+
+ sub my_escape_html ($) {
+ my($what) = shift;
+ return unless defined $what;
+ Encode::decode_utf8(Foo::Bar::escape_html(Encode::encode_utf8($what)));
+ }
+
+Sometimes, when the extension does not convert data but just stores
+and retrieves them, you will be in a position to use the otherwise
+dangerous Encode::_utf8_on() function. Let's say the popular
+C<Foo::Bar> extension, written in C, provides a C<param> method that
+lets you store and retrieve data according to these prototypes:
+
+ $self->param($name, $value); # set a scalar
+ $value = $self->param($name); # retrieve a scalar
+
+If it does not yet provide support for any encoding, one could write a
+derived class with such a C<param> method:
+
+ sub param {
+ my($self,$name,$value) = @_;
+ utf8::upgrade($name); # make sure it is UTF-8 encoded
+ if (defined $value)
+ utf8::upgrade($value); # make sure it is UTF-8 encoded
+ return $self->SUPER::param($name,$value);
+ } else {
+ my $ret = $self->SUPER::param($name);
+ Encode::_utf8_on($ret); # we know, it is UTF-8 encoded
+ return $ret;
+ }
+ }
+
+Some extensions provide filters on data entry/exit points, such as
+DB_File::filter_store_key and family. Look out for such filters in
+the documentation of your extensions, they can make the transition to
+Unicode data much easier.
+
+=head2 speed
+
+Some functions are slower when working on UTF-8 encoded strings than
+on byte encoded strings. All functions that need to hop over
+characters such as length(), substr() or index() can work B<much>
+faster when the underlying data are byte-encoded. Witness the
+following benchmark:
+
+ % perl -e '
+ use Benchmark;
+ use strict;
+ our $l = 10000;
+ our $u = our $b = "x" x $l;
+ substr($u,0,1) = "\x{100}";
+ timethese(-2,{
+ LENGTH_B => q{ length($b) },
+ LENGTH_U => q{ length($u) },
+ SUBSTR_B => q{ substr($b, $l/4, $l/2) },
+ SUBSTR_U => q{ substr($u, $l/4, $l/2) },
+ });
+ '
+ Benchmark: running LENGTH_B, LENGTH_U, SUBSTR_B, SUBSTR_U for at least 2 CPU seconds...
+ LENGTH_B: 2 wallclock secs ( 2.36 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.36 CPU) @ 5649983.05/s (n=13333960)
+ LENGTH_U: 2 wallclock secs ( 2.11 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.11 CPU) @ 12155.45/s (n=25648)
+ SUBSTR_B: 3 wallclock secs ( 2.16 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.16 CPU) @ 374480.09/s (n=808877)
+ SUBSTR_U: 2 wallclock secs ( 2.11 usr + 0.00 sys = 2.11 CPU) @ 6791.00/s (n=14329)
+
+The numbers show an incredible slowness on long UTF-8 strings and you
+should carefully avoid to use these functions within tight loops. For
+example if you want to iterate over characters, it is infinitely
+better to split into an array than to use substr, as the following
+benchmark shows:
+
+ % perl -e '
+ use Benchmark;
+ use strict;
+ our $l = 10000;
+ our $u = our $b = "x" x $l;
+ substr($u,0,1) = "\x{100}";
+ timethese(-5,{
+ SPLIT_B => q{ for my $c (split //, $b){} },
+ SPLIT_U => q{ for my $c (split //, $u){} },
+ SUBSTR_B => q{ for my $i (0..length($b)-1){my $c = substr($b,$i,1);} },
+ SUBSTR_U => q{ for my $i (0..length($u)-1){my $c = substr($u,$i,1);} },
+ });
+ '
+ Benchmark: running SPLIT_B, SPLIT_U, SUBSTR_B, SUBSTR_U for at least 5 CPU seconds...
+ SPLIT_B: 6 wallclock secs ( 5.29 usr + 0.00 sys = 5.29 CPU) @ 56.14/s (n=297)
+ SPLIT_U: 5 wallclock secs ( 5.17 usr + 0.01 sys = 5.18 CPU) @ 55.21/s (n=286)
+ SUBSTR_B: 5 wallclock secs ( 5.34 usr + 0.00 sys = 5.34 CPU) @ 123.22/s (n=658)
+ SUBSTR_U: 7 wallclock secs ( 6.20 usr + 0.00 sys = 6.20 CPU) @ 0.81/s (n=5)
+
+You see, the algorithm based on substr() was faster with byte encoded
+data but it is pathologically slow with UTF-8 data.
+
=head1 SEE ALSO
L<perluniintro>, L<encoding>, L<Encode>, L<open>, L<utf8>, L<bytes>,
projects / p5sagit/p5-mst-13.2.git / blobdiff