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

NAME
       Encode - character encodings

SYNOPSIS
	   use Encode;

       Table of Contents

       Encode consists of a collection of modules whose details are too big to
       fit in one document.  This POD itself explains the top-level APIs and
       general topics at a glance.  For other topics and more details, see the
       PODs below:

	 Name			       Description
	 --------------------------------------------------------
	 Encode::Alias	       Alias definitions to encodings
	 Encode::Encoding      Encode Implementation Base Class
	 Encode::Supported     List of Supported Encodings
	 Encode::CN	       Simplified Chinese Encodings
	 Encode::JP	       Japanese Encodings
	 Encode::KR	       Korean Encodings
	 Encode::TW	       Traditional Chinese Encodings
	 --------------------------------------------------------

DESCRIPTION
       The "Encode" module provides the interfaces between Perl's strings and
       the rest of the system.	Perl strings are sequences of characters.

       The repertoire of characters that Perl can represent is at least that
       defined by the Unicode Consortium. On most platforms the ordinal values
       of the characters (as returned by "ord(ch)") is the "Unicode codepoint"
       for the character (the exceptions are those platforms where the legacy
       encoding is some variant of EBCDIC rather than a super-set of ASCII -
       see perlebcdic).

       Traditionally, computer data has been moved around in 8-bit chunks
       often called "bytes". These chunks are also known as "octets" in
       networking standards. Perl is widely used to manipulate data of many
       types - not only strings of characters representing human or computer
       languages but also "binary" data being the machine's representation of
       numbers, pixels in an image - or just about anything.

       When Perl is processing "binary data", the programmer wants Perl to
       process "sequences of bytes". This is not a problem for Perl - as a
       byte has 256 possible values, it easily fits in Perl's much larger
       "logical character".

       TERMINOLOGY

       · character: a character in the range 0..(2**32-1) (or more).  (What
	 Perl's strings are made of.)

       · byte: a character in the range 0..255 (A special case of a Perl
	 character.)

       · octet: 8 bits of data, with ordinal values 0..255 (Term for bytes
	 passed to or from a non-Perl context, e.g. a disk file.)

PERL ENCODING API
       $octets	= encode(ENCODING, $string [, CHECK])
	 Encodes a string from Perl's internal form into ENCODING and returns
	 a sequence of octets.	ENCODING can be either a canonical name or an
	 alias.	 For encoding names and aliases, see "Defining Aliases".  For
	 CHECK, see "Handling Malformed Data".

	 For example, to convert a string from Perl's internal format to
	 iso-8859-1 (also known as Latin1),

	   $octets = encode("iso-8859-1", $string);

	 CAVEAT: When you run "$octets = encode("utf8", $string)", then
	 $octets may not be equal to $string.  Though they both contain the
	 same data, the UTF8 flag for $octets is always off.  When you encode
	 anything, UTF8 flag of the result is always off, even when it
	 contains completely valid utf8 string. See "The UTF8 flag" below.

	 If the $string is "undef" then "undef" is returned.

       $string = decode(ENCODING, $octets [, CHECK])
	 Decodes a sequence of octets assumed to be in ENCODING into Perl's
	 internal form and returns the resulting string.  As in encode(),
	 ENCODING can be either a canonical name or an alias. For encoding
	 names and aliases, see "Defining Aliases".  For CHECK, see "Handling
	 Malformed Data".

	 For example, to convert ISO-8859-1 data to a string in Perl's
	 internal format:

	   $string = decode("iso-8859-1", $octets);

	 CAVEAT: When you run "$string = decode("utf8", $octets)", then
	 $string may not be equal to $octets.  Though they both contain the
	 same data, the UTF8 flag for $string is on unless $octets entirely
	 consists of ASCII data (or EBCDIC on EBCDIC machines).	 See "The UTF8
	 flag" below.

	 If the $string is "undef" then "undef" is returned.

       [$obj =] find_encoding(ENCODING)
	 Returns the encoding object corresponding to ENCODING.	 Returns undef
	 if no matching ENCODING is find.

	 This object is what actually does the actual (en|de)coding.

	   $utf8 = decode($name, $bytes);

	 is in fact

	   $utf8 = do{
	     $obj = find_encoding($name);
	     croak qq(encoding "$name" not found) unless ref $obj;
	     $obj->decode($bytes)
	   };

	 with more error checking.

	 Therefore you can save time by reusing this object as follows;

	   my $enc = find_encoding("iso-8859-1");
	   while(<>){
	      my $utf8 = $enc->decode($_);
	      # and do someting with $utf8;
	   }

	 Besides "->decode" and "->encode", other methods are available as
	 well.	For instance, "-> name" returns the canonical name of the
	 encoding object.

	   find_encoding("latin1")->name; # iso-8859-1

	 See Encode::Encoding for details.

       [$length =] from_to($octets, FROM_ENC, TO_ENC [, CHECK])
	 Converts in-place data between two encodings. The data in $octets
	 must be encoded as octets and not as characters in Perl's internal
	 format. For example, to convert ISO-8859-1 data to Microsoft's CP1250
	 encoding:

	   from_to($octets, "iso-8859-1", "cp1250");

	 and to convert it back:

	   from_to($octets, "cp1250", "iso-8859-1");

	 Note that because the conversion happens in place, the data to be
	 converted cannot be a string constant; it must be a scalar variable.

	 from_to() returns the length of the converted string in octets on
	 success, undef on error.

	 CAVEAT: The following operations look the same but are not quite so;

	   from_to($data, "iso-8859-1", "utf8"); #1
	   $data = decode("iso-8859-1", $data);	 #2

	 Both #1 and #2 make $data consist of a completely valid UTF-8 string
	 but only #2 turns UTF8 flag on.  #1 is equivalent to

	   $data = encode("utf8", decode("iso-8859-1", $data));

	 See "The UTF8 flag" below.

	 Also note that

	   from_to($octets, $from, $to, $check);

	 is equivalent to

	   $octets = encode($to, decode($from, $octets), $check);

	 Yes, it does not respect the $check during decoding.  It is
	 deliberately done that way.  If you need minute control, "decode"
	 then "encode" as follows;

	   $octets = encode($to, decode($from, $octets, $check_from), $check_to);

       $octets = encode_utf8($string);
	 Equivalent to "$octets = encode("utf8", $string);" The characters
	 that comprise $string are encoded in Perl's internal format and the
	 result is returned as a sequence of octets. All possible characters
	 have a UTF-8 representation so this function cannot fail.

       $string = decode_utf8($octets [, CHECK]);
	 equivalent to "$string = decode("utf8", $octets [, CHECK])".  The
	 sequence of octets represented by $octets is decoded from UTF-8 into
	 a sequence of logical characters. Not all sequences of octets form
	 valid UTF-8 encodings, so it is possible for this call to fail.  For
	 CHECK, see "Handling Malformed Data".

       Listing available encodings

	 use Encode;
	 @list = Encode->encodings();

       Returns a list of the canonical names of the available encodings that
       are loaded.  To get a list of all available encodings including the
       ones that are not loaded yet, say

	 @all_encodings = Encode->encodings(":all");

       Or you can give the name of a specific module.

	 @with_jp = Encode->encodings("Encode::JP");

       When "::" is not in the name, "Encode::" is assumed.

	 @ebcdic = Encode->encodings("EBCDIC");

       To find out in detail which encodings are supported by this package,
       see Encode::Supported.

       Defining Aliases

       To add a new alias to a given encoding, use:

	 use Encode;
	 use Encode::Alias;
	 define_alias(newName => ENCODING);

       After that, newName can be used as an alias for ENCODING.  ENCODING may
       be either the name of an encoding or an encoding object

       But before you do so, make sure the alias is nonexistent with
       "resolve_alias()", which returns the canonical name thereof.  i.e.

	 Encode::resolve_alias("latin1") eq "iso-8859-1" # true
	 Encode::resolve_alias("iso-8859-12")	# false; nonexistent
	 Encode::resolve_alias($name) eq $name	# true if $name is canonical

       resolve_alias() does not need "use Encode::Alias"; it can be exported
       via "use Encode qw(resolve_alias)".

       See Encode::Alias for details.

       Finding IANA Character Set Registry names

       The canonical name of a given encoding does not necessarily agree with
       IANA IANA Character Set Registry, commonly seen as "Content-Type:
       text/plain; charset=whatever".  For most cases canonical names work but
       sometimes it does not (notably 'utf-8-strict').

       Therefore as of Encode version 2.21, a new method "mime_name()" is
       added.

	 use Encode;
	 my $enc = find_encoding('UTF-8');
	 warn $enc->name;      # utf-8-strict
	 warn $enc->mime_name; # UTF-8

       See also:  Encode::Encoding

Encoding via PerlIO
       If your perl supports PerlIO (which is the default), you can use a
       PerlIO layer to decode and encode directly via a filehandle.  The
       following two examples are totally identical in their functionality.

	 # via PerlIO
	 open my $in,  "<:encoding(shiftjis)", $infile	or die;
	 open my $out, ">:encoding(euc-jp)",   $outfile or die;
	 while(<$in>){ print $out $_; }

	 # via from_to
	 open my $in,  "<", $infile  or die;
	 open my $out, ">", $outfile or die;
	 while(<$in>){
	   from_to($_, "shiftjis", "euc-jp", 1);
	   print $out $_;
	 }

       Unfortunately, it may be that encodings are PerlIO-savvy.  You can
       check if your encoding is supported by PerlIO by calling the
       "perlio_ok" method.

	 Encode::perlio_ok("hz");	      # False
	 find_encoding("euc-cn")->perlio_ok;  # True where PerlIO is available

	 use Encode qw(perlio_ok);	      # exported upon request
	 perlio_ok("euc-jp")

       Fortunately, all encodings that come with Encode core are PerlIO-savvy
       except for hz and ISO-2022-kr.  For gory details, see Encode::Encoding
       and Encode::PerlIO.

Handling Malformed Data
       The optional CHECK argument tells Encode what to do when it encounters
       malformed data.	Without CHECK, Encode::FB_DEFAULT ( == 0 ) is assumed.

       As of version 2.12 Encode supports coderef values for CHECK.  See
       below.

       NOTE: Not all encoding support this feature
	 Some encodings ignore CHECK argument.	For example, Encode::Unicode
	 ignores CHECK and it always croaks on error.

       Now here is the list of CHECK values available

       CHECK = Encode::FB_DEFAULT ( == 0)
	 If CHECK is 0, (en|de)code will put a substitution character in place
	 of a malformed character.  When you encode, <subchar> will be used.
	 When you decode the code point 0xFFFD is used.	 If the data is
	 supposed to be UTF-8, an optional lexical warning (category utf8) is
	 given.

       CHECK = Encode::FB_CROAK ( == 1)
	 If CHECK is 1, methods will die on error immediately with an error
	 message.  Therefore, when CHECK is set to 1,  you should trap the
	 error with eval{} unless you really want to let it die.

       CHECK = Encode::FB_QUIET
	 If CHECK is set to Encode::FB_QUIET, (en|de)code will immediately
	 return the portion of the data that has been processed so far when an
	 error occurs. The data argument will be overwritten with everything
	 after that point (that is, the unprocessed part of data).  This is
	 handy when you have to call decode repeatedly in the case where your
	 source data may contain partial multi-byte character sequences, (i.e.
	 you are reading with a fixed-width buffer). Here is a sample code
	 that does exactly this:

	   my $buffer = ''; my $string = '';
	   while(read $fh, $buffer, 256, length($buffer)){
	     $string .= decode($encoding, $buffer, Encode::FB_QUIET);
	     # $buffer now contains the unprocessed partial character
	   }

       CHECK = Encode::FB_WARN
	 This is the same as above, except that it warns on error.  Handy when
	 you are debugging the mode above.

       perlqq mode (CHECK = Encode::FB_PERLQQ)
       HTML charref mode (CHECK = Encode::FB_HTMLCREF)
       XML charref mode (CHECK = Encode::FB_XMLCREF)
	 For encodings that are implemented by Encode::XS, CHECK ==
	 Encode::FB_PERLQQ turns (en|de)code into "perlqq" fallback mode.

	 When you decode, "\xHH" will be inserted for a malformed character,
	 where HH is the hex representation of the octet  that could not be
	 decoded to utf8.  And when you encode, "\x{HHHH}" will be inserted,
	 where HHHH is the Unicode ID of the character that cannot be found in
	 the character repertoire of the encoding.

	 HTML/XML character reference modes are about the same, in place of
	 "\x{HHHH}", HTML uses "&#NNN;" where NNN is a decimal number and XML
	 uses "&#xHHHH;" where HHHH is the hexadecimal number.

	 In Encode 2.10 or later, "LEAVE_SRC" is also implied.

       The bitmask
	 These modes are actually set via a bitmask.  Here is how the FB_XX
	 constants are laid out.  You can import the FB_XX constants via "use
	 Encode qw(:fallbacks)"; you can import the generic bitmask constants
	 via "use Encode qw(:fallback_all)".

			      FB_DEFAULT FB_CROAK FB_QUIET FB_WARN  FB_PERLQQ
	  DIE_ON_ERR	0x0001		   X
	  WARN_ON_ERR	0x0002				     X
	  RETURN_ON_ERR 0x0004			    X	     X
	  LEAVE_SRC	0x0008					      X
	  PERLQQ	0x0100					      X
	  HTMLCREF	0x0200
	  XMLCREF	0x0400

       Encode::LEAVE_SRC
	 If the "Encode::LEAVE_SRC" bit is not set, but CHECK is, then the
	 second argument to "encode()" or "decode()" may be assigned to by the
	 functions. If you're not interested in this, then bitwise-or the
	 bitmask with it.

       As of Encode 2.12 CHECK can also be a code reference which takes the
       ord value of unmapped caharacter as an argument and returns a string
       that represents the fallback character.	For instance,

	 $ascii = encode("ascii", $utf8, sub{ sprintf "<U+%04X>", shift });

       Acts like FB_PERLQQ but <U+XXXX> is used instead of \x{XXXX}.

Defining Encodings
       To define a new encoding, use:

	   use Encode qw(define_encoding);
	   define_encoding($object, 'canonicalName' [, alias...]);

       canonicalName will be associated with $object.  The object should
       provide the interface described in Encode::Encoding.  If more than two
       arguments are provided then additional arguments are taken as aliases
       for $object.

       See Encode::Encoding for more details.

The UTF8 flag
       Before the introduction of Unicode support in perl, The "eq" operator
       just compared the strings represented by two scalars. Beginning with
       perl 5.8, "eq" compares two strings with simultaneous consideration of
       the UTF8 flag. To explain why we made it so, I will quote page 402 of
       "Programming Perl, 3rd ed."

       Goal #1:
	 Old byte-oriented programs should not spontaneously break on the old
	 byte-oriented data they used to work on.

       Goal #2:
	 Old byte-oriented programs should magically start working on the new
	 character-oriented data when appropriate.

       Goal #3:
	 Programs should run just as fast in the new character-oriented mode
	 as in the old byte-oriented mode.

       Goal #4:
	 Perl should remain one language, rather than forking into a byte-
	 oriented Perl and a character-oriented Perl.

       Back when "Programming Perl, 3rd ed." was written, not even Perl 5.6.0
       was born and many features documented in the book remained
       unimplemented for a long time.  Perl 5.8 corrected this and the
       introduction of the UTF8 flag is one of them.  You can think of this
       perl notion as of a byte-oriented mode (UTF8 flag off) and a character-
       oriented mode (UTF8 flag on).

       Here is how Encode takes care of the UTF8 flag.

       · When you encode, the resulting UTF8 flag is always off.

       · When you decode, the resulting UTF8 flag is on unless you can
	 unambiguously represent data.	Here is the definition of dis-
	 ambiguity.

	 After "$utf8 = decode('foo', $octet);",

	   When $octet is...   The UTF8 flag in $utf8 is
	   ---------------------------------------------
	   In ASCII only (or EBCDIC only)	     OFF
	   In ISO-8859-1			      ON
	   In any other Encoding		      ON
	   ---------------------------------------------

	 As you see, there is one exception, In ASCII.	That way you can
	 assume Goal #1.  And with Encode Goal #2 is assumed but you still
	 have to be careful in such cases mentioned in CAVEAT paragraphs.

	 This UTF8 flag is not visible in perl scripts, exactly for the same
	 reason you cannot (or you don't have to) see if a scalar contains a
	 string, integer, or floating point number.   But you can still peek
	 and poke these if you will.  See the section below.

       Messing with Perl's Internals

       The following API uses parts of Perl's internals in the current
       implementation.	As such, they are efficient but may change.

       is_utf8(STRING [, CHECK])
	 [INTERNAL] Tests whether the UTF8 flag is turned on in the STRING.
	 If CHECK is true, also checks the data in STRING for being well-
	 formed UTF-8.	Returns true if successful, false otherwise.

	 As of perl 5.8.1, utf8 also has utf8::is_utf8().

       _utf8_on(STRING)
	 [INTERNAL] Turns on the UTF8 flag in STRING.  The data in STRING is
	 not checked for being well-formed UTF-8.  Do not use unless you know
	 that the STRING is well-formed UTF-8.	Returns the previous state of
	 the UTF8 flag (so please don't treat the return value as indicating
	 success or failure), or "undef" if STRING is not a string.

       _utf8_off(STRING)
	 [INTERNAL] Turns off the UTF8 flag in STRING.	Do not use
	 frivolously.  Returns the previous state of the UTF8 flag (so please
	 don't treat the return value as indicating success or failure), or
	 "undef" if STRING is not a string.

UTF-8 vs. utf8 vs. UTF8
	 ....We now view strings not as sequences of bytes, but as sequences
	 of numbers in the range 0 .. 2**32-1 (or in the case of 64-bit
	 computers, 0 .. 2**64-1) -- Programming Perl, 3rd ed.

       That has been the perl's notion of UTF-8 but official UTF-8 is more
       strict; Its ranges is much narrower (0 .. 10FFFF), some sequences are
       not allowed (i.e. Those used in the surrogate pair, 0xFFFE, et al).

       Now that is overruled by Larry Wall himself.

	 From: Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>
	 Date: December 04, 2004 11:51:58 JST
	 To: perl-unicode@perl.org
	 Subject: Re: Make Encode.pm support the real UTF-8
	 Message-Id: <20041204025158.GA28754@wall.org>

	 On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 10:12:12PM +0000, Tim Bunce wrote:
	 : I've no problem with 'utf8' being perl's unrestricted uft8 encoding,
	 : but "UTF-8" is the name of the standard and should give the
	 : corresponding behaviour.

	 For what it's worth, that's how I've always kept them straight in my
	 head.

	 Also for what it's worth, Perl 6 will mostly default to strict but
	 make it easy to switch back to lax.

	 Larry

       Do you copy?  As of Perl 5.8.7, UTF-8 means strict, official UTF-8
       while utf8 means liberal, lax, version thereof.	And Encode version
       2.10 or later thus groks the difference between "UTF-8" and C"utf8".

	 encode("utf8",	 "\x{FFFF_FFFF}", 1); # okay
	 encode("UTF-8", "\x{FFFF_FFFF}", 1); # croaks

       "UTF-8" in Encode is actually a canonical name for "utf-8-strict".
       Yes, the hyphen between "UTF" and "8" is important.  Without it Encode
       goes "liberal"

	 find_encoding("UTF-8")->name # is 'utf-8-strict'
	 find_encoding("utf-8")->name # ditto. names are case insensitive
	 find_encoding("utf_8")->name  # ditto. "_" are treated as "-"
	 find_encoding("UTF8")->name  # is 'utf8'.

       The UTF8 flag is internally called UTF8, without a hyphen. It indicates
       whether a string is internally encoded as utf8, also without a hypen.

SEE ALSO
       Encode::Encoding, Encode::Supported, Encode::PerlIO, encoding,
       perlebcdic, "open" in perlfunc, perlunicode, perluniintro, perlunifaq,
       perlunitut utf8, the Perl Unicode Mailing List <perl-unicode@perl.org>

MAINTAINER
       This project was originated by Nick Ing-Simmons and later maintained by
       Dan Kogai <dankogai@dan.co.jp>.	See AUTHORS for a full list of people
       involved.  For any questions, use <perl-unicode@perl.org> so we can all
       share.

       While Dan Kogai retains the copyright as a maintainer, the credit
       should go to all those involoved.  See AUTHORS for those submitted
       codes.

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright 2002-2006 Dan Kogai <dankogai@dan.co.jp>

       This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the same terms as Perl itself.

POD ERRORS
       Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained
       below:

       Around line 737:
	   Unknown directive: =Head2

perl v5.10.0			  2007-12-18			   Encode(3pm)
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