huschi.net

utf8(3pm)              Perl Programmers Reference Guide              utf8(3pm)

NAME
       utf8 - Perl pragma to enable/disable UTF-8 (or UTF-EBCDIC) in source
       code
SYNOPSIS
           use utf8;
           no utf8;
           # Convert the internal representation of a Perl scalar to/from UTF-8.
           $num_octets = utf8::upgrade($string);
           $success    = utf8::downgrade($string[, FAIL_OK]);
           # Change each character of a Perl scalar to/from a series of
           # characters that represent the UTF-8 bytes of each original character.
           utf8::encode($string);  # "\x{100}"  becomes "\xc4\x80"
           utf8::decode($string);  # "\xc4\x80" becomes "\x{100}"
           $flag = utf8::is_utf8(STRING); # since Perl 5.8.1
           $flag = utf8::valid(STRING);
DESCRIPTION
       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 perlrun.
       Enabling the "utf8" pragma has the following effect:
       o   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;".
   Utility functions
       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.
       o   $num_octets = utf8::upgrade($string)
           Converts in-place the internal representation of the string from an
           octet sequence in the native encoding (Latin-1 or EBCDIC) to UTF-X.
           The logical character sequence itself is unchanged.  If $string is
           already stored as UTF-X, then this is a no-op. 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.
       o   $success = utf8::downgrade($string[, FAIL_OK])
           Converts in-place the internal representation of the string from
           UTF-X to the equivalent octet sequence in the native encoding
           (Latin-1 or EBCDIC). The logical character sequence itself is
           unchanged. If $string is already stored as native 8 bit, then this
           is a no-op.  Can be used to make sure that the UTF-8 flag is off,
           e.g. when you want to make sure that the substr() or length()
           function works with the usually faster byte algorithm.
           Fails if the original UTF-X sequence cannot be represented in the
           native 8 bit encoding. On failure dies or, if the value of
           "FAIL_OK" is true, returns false.
           Returns true on success.
           Note that this function does not handle arbitrary encodings.
           Therefore Encode is recommended for the general purposes; see also
           Encode.
       o   utf8::encode($string)
           Converts in-place the character sequence to the corresponding octet
           sequence in UTF-X. That is, every (possibly wide) character gets
           replaced with a sequence of one or more characters that represent
           the individual UTF-X bytes of the character.  The UTF8 flag is
           turned off.  Returns nothing.
               my $a = "\x{100}"; # $a contains one character, with ord 0x100
               utf8::encode($a);  # $a contains two characters, with ords 0xc4 and 0x80
           Note that this function does not handle arbitrary encodings.
           Therefore Encode is recommended for the general purposes; see also
           Encode.
       o   $success = utf8::decode($string)
           Attempts to convert in-place the octet sequence in UTF-X to the
           corresponding character sequence. That is, it replaces each
           sequence of characters in the string whose ords represent a valid
           UTF-X byte sequence, with the corresponding single character.  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.
               my $a = "\xc4\x80"; # $a contains two characters, with ords 0xc4 and 0x80
               utf8::decode($a);   # $a contains one character, with ord 0x100
           Note that this function does not handle arbitrary encodings.
           Therefore Encode is recommended for the general purposes; see also
           Encode.
       o   $flag = utf8::is_utf8(STRING)
           (Since Perl 5.8.1)  Test whether STRING is in UTF-8 internally.
           Functionally the same as Encode::is_utf8().
       o   $flag = utf8::valid(STRING)
           [INTERNAL] Test whether STRING is in a consistent state regarding
           UTF-8.  Will return true is well-formed UTF-8 and has the UTF-8
           flag on or if string is held as bytes (both these states are
           'consistent').  Main reason for this routine is to allow Perl's
           testsuite to check that operations have left strings in a
           consistent state.  You most probably want to use utf8::is_utf8()
           instead.
       "utf8::encode" is like "utf8::upgrade", but the UTF8 flag is cleared.
       See perlunicode for more on the UTF8 flag and the C API functions
       "sv_utf8_upgrade", "sv_utf8_downgrade", "sv_utf8_encode", and
       "sv_utf8_decode", which are wrapped by the Perl functions
       "utf8::upgrade", "utf8::downgrade", "utf8::encode" and "utf8::decode".
       Also, the functions utf8::is_utf8, utf8::valid, utf8::encode,
       utf8::decode, utf8::upgrade, and utf8::downgrade are actually internal,
       and thus always available, without a "require utf8" statement.
BUGS
       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.
SEE ALSO
       perlunitut, perluniintro, perlrun, bytes, perlunicode

perl v5.16.3                      2013-03-04                         utf8(3pm)