to 255 (inclusive) are by default not encoded in Unicode for backward
compatibility reasons (but see L<encoding>).
+If NUMBER is omitted, uses C<$_>.
+
For the reverse, use L</ord>.
-See L<perlunicode> and L<encoding> for more about Unicode.
-If NUMBER is omitted, uses C<$_>.
+Note that under the C<bytes> pragma the NUMBER is masked to
+the low eight bits.
+
+See L<perlunicode> and L<encoding> for more about Unicode.
=item chroot FILENAME
=item length
-Returns the length in characters of the value of EXPR. If EXPR is
+Returns the length in I<characters> of the value of EXPR. If EXPR is
omitted, returns length of C<$_>. Note that this cannot be used on
an entire array or hash to find out how many elements these have.
For that, use C<scalar @array> and C<scalar keys %hash> respectively.
+Note the I<characters>: if the EXPR is in Unicode, you will get the
+number of characters, not the number of bytes. To get the length
+in bytes, use C<do { use bytes; length(EXPR) }>, see L<bytes>.
+
=item link OLDFILE,NEWFILE
Creates a new filename linked to the old filename. Returns true for
=item rmdir
-Deletes the directory specified by FILENAME if that directory is empty. If it
-succeeds it returns true, otherwise it returns false and sets C<$!> (errno). If
-FILENAME is omitted, uses C<$_>.
+Deletes the directory specified by FILENAME if that directory is
+empty. If it succeeds it returns true, otherwise it returns false and
+sets C<$!> (errno). If FILENAME is omitted, uses C<$_>.
=item s///