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

NAME
       charnames - access to Unicode character names and named character
       sequences; also define character names

SYNOPSIS
	use charnames ':full';
	print "\N{GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA} is called sigma.\n";
	print "\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH VERTICAL LINE BELOW}",
	      " is an officially named sequence of two Unicode characters\n";

	use charnames ':short';
	print "\N{greek:Sigma} is an upper-case sigma.\n";

	use charnames qw(cyrillic greek);
	print "\N{sigma} is Greek sigma, and \N{be} is Cyrillic b.\n";

	use charnames ":full", ":alias" => {
	  e_ACUTE => "LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE",
	  mychar => 0xE8000,  # Private use area
	};
	print "\N{e_ACUTE} is a small letter e with an acute.\n";
	print "\\N{mychar} allows me to name private use characters.\n";

	use charnames ();
	print charnames::viacode(0x1234); # prints "ETHIOPIC SYLLABLE SEE"
	printf "%04X", charnames::vianame("GOTHIC LETTER AHSA"); # prints
								 # "10330"
	print charnames::vianame("LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A"); # prints 65 on
							    # ASCII platforms;
							    # 193 on EBCDIC
	print charnames::string_vianame("LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A"); # prints "A"

DESCRIPTION
       Pragma "use charnames" is used to gain access to the names of the
       Unicode characters and named character sequences, and to allow you to
       define your own character and character sequence names.

       All forms of the pragma enable use of the following 3 functions:

       ·   "charnames::string_vianame(name)" for run-time lookup of a either a
	   character name or a named character sequence, returning its string
	   representation

       ·   "charnames::vianame(name)" for run-time lookup of a character name
	   (but not a named character sequence) to get its ordinal value (code
	   point)

       ·   "charnames::viacode(code)" for run-time lookup of a code point to
	   get its Unicode name.

       All forms other than "use charnames ();" also enable the use of
       "\N{CHARNAME}" sequences to compile a Unicode character into a string,
       based on its name.

       Note that "\N{U+...}", where the ... is a hexadecimal number, also
       inserts a character into a string, but doesn't require the use of this
       pragma.	The character it inserts is the one whose code point (ordinal
       value) is equal to the number.  For example, "\N{U+263a}" is the
       Unicode (white background, black foreground) smiley face; it doesn't
       require this pragma, whereas the equivalent, "\N{WHITE SMILING FACE}"
       does.  Also, "\N{...}" can mean a regex quantifier instead of a
       character name, when the ... is a number (or comma separated pair of
       numbers (see "QUANTIFIERS" in perlreref), and is not related to this
       pragma.

       The "charnames" pragma supports arguments ":full", ":short", script
       names and customized aliases.  If ":full" is present, for expansion of
       "\N{CHARNAME}", the string CHARNAME is first looked up in the list of
       standard Unicode character names.  If ":short" is present, and CHARNAME
       has the form "SCRIPT:CNAME", then CNAME is looked up as a letter in
       script SCRIPT.  If "use charnames" is used with script name arguments,
       then for "\N{CHARNAME}" the name CHARNAME is looked up as a letter in
       the given scripts (in the specified order). Customized aliases can
       override these, and are explained in "CUSTOM ALIASES".

       For lookup of CHARNAME inside a given script SCRIPTNAME this pragma
       looks for the names

	 SCRIPTNAME CAPITAL LETTER CHARNAME
	 SCRIPTNAME SMALL LETTER CHARNAME
	 SCRIPTNAME LETTER CHARNAME

       in the table of standard Unicode names.	If CHARNAME is lowercase, then
       the "CAPITAL" variant is ignored, otherwise the "SMALL" variant is
       ignored.

       Note that "\N{...}" is compile-time; it's a special form of string
       constant used inside double-quotish strings; this means that you cannot
       use variables inside the "\N{...}".  If you want similar run-time
       functionality, use charnames::string_vianame().

       For the C0 and C1 control characters (U+0000..U+001F, U+0080..U+009F)
       there are no official Unicode names but you can use instead the ISO
       6429 names (LINE FEED, ESCAPE, and so forth, and their abbreviations,
       LF, ESC, ...).  In Unicode 3.2 (as of Perl 5.8) some naming changes
       took place, and ISO 6429 was updated, see "ALIASES".

       If the input name is unknown, "\N{NAME}" raises a warning and
       substitutes the Unicode REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (U+FFFD).

       For "\N{NAME}", it is a fatal error if "use bytes" is in effect and the
       input name is that of a character that won't fit into a byte (i.e.,
       whose ordinal is above 255).

       Otherwise, any string that includes a "\N{charname}" or
       "\N{U+code point}" will automatically have Unicode semantics (see "Byte
       and Character Semantics" in perlunicode).

ALIASES
       A few aliases have been defined for convenience: instead of having to
       use the official names

	   LINE FEED (LF)
	   FORM FEED (FF)
	   CARRIAGE RETURN (CR)
	   NEXT LINE (NEL)

       (yes, with parentheses), one can use

	   LINE FEED
	   FORM FEED
	   CARRIAGE RETURN
	   NEXT LINE
	   LF
	   FF
	   CR
	   NEL

       All the other standard abbreviations for the controls, such as "ACK"
       for "ACKNOWLEDGE" also can be used.

       One can also use

	   BYTE ORDER MARK
	   BOM

       and these abbreviations

	   Abbreviation	       Full Name

	   CGJ		       COMBINING GRAPHEME JOINER
	   FVS1		       MONGOLIAN FREE VARIATION SELECTOR ONE
	   FVS2		       MONGOLIAN FREE VARIATION SELECTOR TWO
	   FVS3		       MONGOLIAN FREE VARIATION SELECTOR THREE
	   LRE		       LEFT-TO-RIGHT EMBEDDING
	   LRM		       LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK
	   LRO		       LEFT-TO-RIGHT OVERRIDE
	   MMSP		       MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE
	   MVS		       MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR
	   NBSP		       NO-BREAK SPACE
	   NNBSP	       NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE
	   PDF		       POP DIRECTIONAL FORMATTING
	   RLE		       RIGHT-TO-LEFT EMBEDDING
	   RLM		       RIGHT-TO-LEFT MARK
	   RLO		       RIGHT-TO-LEFT OVERRIDE
	   SHY		       SOFT HYPHEN
	   VS1		       VARIATION SELECTOR-1
	   .
	   .
	   .
	   VS256	       VARIATION SELECTOR-256
	   WJ		       WORD JOINER
	   ZWJ		       ZERO WIDTH JOINER
	   ZWNJ		       ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER
	   ZWSP		       ZERO WIDTH SPACE

       For backward compatibility one can use the old names for certain C0 and
       C1 controls

	   old			       new

	   FILE SEPARATOR	       INFORMATION SEPARATOR FOUR
	   GROUP SEPARATOR	       INFORMATION SEPARATOR THREE
	   HORIZONTAL TABULATION       CHARACTER TABULATION
	   HORIZONTAL TABULATION SET   CHARACTER TABULATION SET
	   HORIZONTAL TABULATION WITH JUSTIFICATION    CHARACTER TABULATION
						       WITH JUSTIFICATION
	   PARTIAL LINE DOWN	       PARTIAL LINE FORWARD
	   PARTIAL LINE UP	       PARTIAL LINE BACKWARD
	   RECORD SEPARATOR	       INFORMATION SEPARATOR TWO
	   REVERSE INDEX	       REVERSE LINE FEED
	   UNIT SEPARATOR	       INFORMATION SEPARATOR ONE
	   VERTICAL TABULATION	       LINE TABULATION
	   VERTICAL TABULATION SET     LINE TABULATION SET

       but the old names in addition to giving the character will also give a
       warning about being deprecated.

       And finally, certain published variants are usable, including some for
       controls that have no Unicode names:

	   name					  character

	   END OF PROTECTED AREA		  END OF GUARDED AREA, U+0097
	   HIGH OCTET PRESET			  U+0081
	   HOP					  U+0081
	   IND					  U+0084
	   INDEX				  U+0084
	   PAD					  U+0080
	   PADDING CHARACTER			  U+0080
	   PRIVATE USE 1			  PRIVATE USE ONE, U+0091
	   PRIVATE USE 2			  PRIVATE USE TWO, U+0092
	   SGC					  U+0099
	   SINGLE GRAPHIC CHARACTER INTRODUCER	  U+0099
	   SINGLE-SHIFT 2			  SINGLE SHIFT TWO, U+008E
	   SINGLE-SHIFT 3			  SINGLE SHIFT THREE, U+008F
	   START OF PROTECTED AREA		  START OF GUARDED AREA, U+0096

CUSTOM ALIASES
       You can add customized aliases to standard (":full") Unicode naming
       conventions.  The aliases override any standard definitions, so, if
       you're twisted enough, you can change "\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A}" to
       mean "B", etc.

       Note that an alias should not be something that is a legal curly brace-
       enclosed quantifier (see "QUANTIFIERS" in perlreref).  For example
       "\N{123}" means to match 123 non-newline characters, and is not treated
       as a charnames alias.  Aliases are discouraged from beginning with
       anything other than an alphabetic character and from containing
       anything other than alphanumerics, spaces, dashes, parentheses, and
       underscores.  Currently they must be ASCII.

       An alias can map to either an official Unicode character name or to a
       numeric code point (ordinal).  The latter is useful for assigning names
       to code points in Unicode private use areas such as U+E800 through
       U+F8FF.	A numeric code point must be a non-negative integer or a
       string beginning with "U+" or "0x" with the remainder considered to be
       a hexadecimal integer.  A literal numeric constant must be unsigned; it
       will be interpreted as hex if it has a leading zero or contains non-
       decimal hex digits; otherwise it will be interpreted as decimal.

       Aliases are added either by the use of anonymous hashes:

	   use charnames ":alias" => {
	       e_ACUTE => "LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE",
	       mychar1 => 0xE8000,
	       };
	   my $str = "\N{e_ACUTE}";

       or by using a file containing aliases:

	   use charnames ":alias" => "pro";

       This will try to read "unicore/pro_alias.pl" from the @INC path. This
       file should return a list in plain perl:

	   (
	   A_GRAVE	   => "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE",
	   A_CIRCUM	   => "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH CIRCUMFLEX",
	   A_DIAERES	   => "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH DIAERESIS",
	   A_TILDE	   => "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH TILDE",
	   A_BREVE	   => "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH BREVE",
	   A_RING	   => "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE",
	   A_MACRON	   => "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH MACRON",
	   mychar2	   => "U+E8001",
	   );

       Both these methods insert ":full" automatically as the first argument
       (if no other argument is given), and you can give the ":full"
       explicitly as well, like

	   use charnames ":full", ":alias" => "pro";

       Also, both these methods currently allow only a single character to be
       named.  To name a sequence of characters, use a custom translator
       (described below).

charnames::viacode(code)
       Returns the full name of the character indicated by the numeric code.
       For example,

	   print charnames::viacode(0x2722);

       prints "FOUR TEARDROP-SPOKED ASTERISK".

       The name returned is the official name for the code point, if
       available; otherwise your custom alias for it.  This means that your
       alias will only be returned for code points that don't have an official
       Unicode name (nor Unicode version 1 name), such as private use code
       points, and the 4 control characters U+0080, U+0081, U+0084, and
       U+0099.	If you define more than one name for the code point, it is
       indeterminate which one will be returned.

       The function returns "undef" if no name is known for the code point.
       In Unicode the proper name of these is the empty string, which "undef"
       stringifies to.	(If you ask for a code point past the legal Unicode
       maximum of U+10FFFF that you haven't assigned an alias to, you get
       "undef" plus a warning.)

       The input number must be a non-negative integer or a string beginning
       with "U+" or "0x" with the remainder considered to be a hexadecimal
       integer.	 A literal numeric constant must be unsigned; it will be
       interpreted as hex if it has a leading zero or contains non-decimal hex
       digits; otherwise it will be interpreted as decimal.

       Notice that the name returned for of U+FEFF is "ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK
       SPACE", not "BYTE ORDER MARK".

charnames::string_vianame(name)
       This is a runtime equivalent to "\N{...}".  name can be any expression
       that evaluates to a name accepted by "\N{...}" under the ":full" option
       to "charnames".	In addition, any other options for the controlling
       "use charnames" in the same scope apply, like any script list, ":short"
       option, or custom aliases you may have defined.

       The only difference is that if the input name is unknown,
       "string_vianame" returns "undef" instead of the REPLACEMENT CHARACTER
       and does not raise a warning message.

charnames::vianame(name)
       This is similar to "string_vianame".  The main difference is that under
       most circumstances (see "BUGS" for the others), vianame returns an
       ordinal code point, whereas "string_vianame" returns a string.  For
       example,

	  printf "U+%04X", charnames::vianame("FOUR TEARDROP-SPOKED ASTERISK");

       prints "U+2722".

       This leads to the other two differences.	 Since a single code point is
       returned, the function can't handle named character sequences, as these
       are composed of multiple characters.  And, the code point can be that
       of any character, even ones that aren't legal under the "use bytes"
       pragma,

CUSTOM TRANSLATORS
       The mechanism of translation of "\N{...}" escapes is general and not
       hardwired into charnames.pm.  A module can install custom translations
       (inside the scope which "use"s the module) with the following magic
       incantation:

	   sub import {
	       shift;
	       $^H{charnames} = \&translator;
	   }

       Here translator() is a subroutine which takes CHARNAME as an argument,
       and returns text to insert into the string instead of the
       "\N{CHARNAME}" escape.  Since the text to insert should be different in
       "bytes" mode and out of it, the function should check the current state
       of "bytes"-flag as in:

	   use bytes ();		      # for $bytes::hint_bits
	   sub translator {
	       if ($^H & $bytes::hint_bits) {
		   return bytes_translator(@_);
	       }
	       else {
		   return utf8_translator(@_);
	       }
	   }

       See "CUSTOM ALIASES" above for restrictions on CHARNAME.

       Of course, "vianame" and "viacode" would need to be overridden as well.

BUGS
       vianame normally returns an ordinal code point, but when the input name
       is of the form "U+...", it returns a chr instead.  In this case, if
       "use bytes" is in effect and the character won't fit into a byte, it
       returns "undef" and raises a warning.

       Names must be ASCII characters only, which means that you are out of
       luck if you want to create aliases in a language where some or all the
       characters of the desired aliases are non-ASCII.

       Since evaluation of the translation function (see "CUSTOM TRANSLATORS")
       happens in the middle of compilation (of a string literal), the
       translation function should not do any "eval"s or "require"s.  This
       restriction should be lifted (but is low priority) in a future version
       of Perl.

perl v5.14.2			  2011-09-26			charnames(3pm)
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