| utf8 - Perl pragma to enable/disable UTF-8 in source code |
utf8 - Perl pragma to enable/disable UTF-8 (or UTF-EBCDIC) in source code
use utf8;
no utf8;
# Convert a Perl scalar to/from UTF-8.
$num_octets = utf8::upgrade($string);
$success = utf8::downgrade($string[, FAIL_OK]);
# Change the native bytes of a Perl scalar to/from UTF-8 bytes.
utf8::encode($string);
utf8::decode($string);
$flag = utf8::valid(STRING);
The use utf8 pragma tells the Perl parser to allow UTF-8 in the
program text in the current lexical scope (allow UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC based
platforms). The no utf8 pragma tells Perl to switch back to treating
the source text as literal bytes in the current lexical scope.
Do not use this pragma for anything else than telling Perl that your
script is written in UTF-8. The utility functions described below are
directly usable without use utf8;.
Because it is not possible to reliably tell UTF-8 from native 8 bit
encodings, you need either a Byte Order Mark at the beginning of your
source code, or use utf8;, to instruct perl.
When UTF-8 becomes the standard source format, this pragma will effectively become a no-op. For convenience in what follows the term UTF-X is used to refer to UTF-8 on ASCII and ISO Latin based platforms and UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC based platforms.
See also the effects of the -C switch and its cousin, the
$ENV{PERL_UNICODE}, in the perlrun manpage.
Enabling the utf8 pragma has the following effect:
Bytes in the source text that have their high-bit set will be treated as being part of a literal UTF-X sequence. This includes most literals such as identifier names, string constants, and constant regular expression patterns.
On EBCDIC platforms characters in the Latin 1 character set are treated as being part of a literal UTF-EBCDIC character.
Note that if you have bytes with the eighth bit on in your script
(for example embedded Latin-1 in your string literals), use utf8
will be unhappy since the bytes are most probably not well-formed
UTF-X. If you want to have such bytes under use utf8, you can disable
this pragma until the end the block (or file, if at top level) by
no utf8;.
The following functions are defined in the utf8:: package by the
Perl core. You do not need to say use utf8 to use these and in fact
you should not say that unless you really want to have UTF-8 source code.
Converts in-place the internal octet sequence in the native encoding
(Latin-1 or EBCDIC) to the equivalent character sequence in UTF-X.
$string already encoded as characters does no harm. Returns the
number of octets necessary to represent the string as UTF-X. Can be
used to make sure that the UTF-8 flag is on, so that \w or lc()
work as Unicode on strings containing characters in the range 0x80-0xFF
(on ASCII and derivatives).
Note that this function does not handle arbitrary encodings. Therefore Encode is recommended for the general purposes; see also Encode.
Converts in-place the internal octet sequence in UTF-X to the
equivalent octet sequence in the native encoding (Latin-1 or EBCDIC).
$string already encoded as native 8 bit does no harm. Can be used to
make sure that the UTF-8 flag is off, e.g. when you want to make sure
that the substr() or length() function works with the usually faster
byte algorithm.
Fails if the original UTF-X sequence cannot be represented in the
native 8 bit encoding. On failure dies or, if the value of FAIL_OK is
true, returns false.
Returns true on success.
Note that this function does not handle arbitrary encodings. Therefore Encode is recommended for the general purposes; see also Encode.
Converts in-place the character sequence to the corresponding octet sequence in UTF-X. The UTF8 flag is turned off, so that after this operation, the string is a byte string. Returns nothing.
Note that this function does not handle arbitrary encodings. Therefore Encode is recommended for the general purposes; see also Encode.
Attempts to convert in-place the octet sequence in UTF-X to the corresponding character sequence. The UTF-8 flag is turned on only if the source string contains multiple-byte UTF-X characters. If $string is invalid as UTF-X, returns false; otherwise returns true.
Note that this function does not handle arbitrary encodings. Therefore Encode is recommended for the general purposes; see also Encode.
[INTERNAL] Will return true if the string is well-formed UTF-8.
utf8::encode is like utf8::upgrade, but the UTF8 flag is
cleared. See the perlunicode manpage for more on the UTF8 flag and the C API
functions sv_utf8_encode,
and sv_utf8_decode, which are wrapped by the Perl functions
utf8::encode and
utf8::decode. Note that in the Perl 5.8.0 and 5.8.1 implementation
the functions utf8::valid, utf8::encode, utf8::decode,
utf8::upgrade, and utf8::downgrade are always available, without a
require utf8 statement-- this may change in future releases.
One can have Unicode in identifier names, but not in package/class or subroutine names. While some limited functionality towards this does exist as of Perl 5.8.0, that is more accidental than designed; use of Unicode for the said purposes is unsupported.
One reason of this unfinishedness is its (currently) inherent unportability: since both package names and subroutine names may need to be mapped to file and directory names, the Unicode capability of the filesystem becomes important-- and there unfortunately aren't portable answers.
the perlunitut manpage, the perluniintro manpage, the perlrun manpage, the bytes manpage, the perlunicode manpage
| utf8 - Perl pragma to enable/disable UTF-8 in source code |