Commit | Line | Data |
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393fec97 GS |
1 | =head1 NAME |
2 | ||
3 | perlunicode - Unicode support in Perl | |
4 | ||
5 | =head1 DESCRIPTION | |
6 | ||
0a1f2d14 | 7 | =head2 Important Caveats |
21bad921 | 8 | |
776f8809 JH |
9 | WARNING: While the implementation of Unicode support in Perl is now |
10 | fairly complete it is still evolving to some extent. | |
21bad921 | 11 | |
75daf61c JH |
12 | In particular the way Unicode is handled on EBCDIC platforms is still |
13 | rather experimental. On such a platform references to UTF-8 encoding | |
14 | in this document and elsewhere should be read as meaning UTF-EBCDIC as | |
15 | specified in Unicode Technical Report 16 unless ASCII vs EBCDIC issues | |
16 | are specifically discussed. There is no C<utfebcdic> pragma or | |
17 | ":utfebcdic" layer, rather "utf8" and ":utf8" are re-used to mean | |
18 | platform's "natural" 8-bit encoding of Unicode. See L<perlebcdic> for | |
19 | more discussion of the issues. | |
0a1f2d14 NIS |
20 | |
21 | The following areas are still under development. | |
21bad921 | 22 | |
13a2d996 | 23 | =over 4 |
21bad921 GS |
24 | |
25 | =item Input and Output Disciplines | |
26 | ||
75daf61c JH |
27 | A filehandle can be marked as containing perl's internal Unicode |
28 | encoding (UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC) by opening it with the ":utf8" layer. | |
0a1f2d14 | 29 | Other encodings can be converted to perl's encoding on input, or from |
75daf61c JH |
30 | perl's encoding on output by use of the ":encoding()" layer. There is |
31 | not yet a clean way to mark the Perl source itself as being in an | |
32 | particular encoding. | |
21bad921 GS |
33 | |
34 | =item Regular Expressions | |
35 | ||
e6739005 JH |
36 | The regular expression compiler does now attempt to produce |
37 | polymorphic opcodes. That is the pattern should now adapt to the data | |
75daf61c JH |
38 | and automatically switch to the Unicode character scheme when |
39 | presented with Unicode data, or a traditional byte scheme when | |
40 | presented with byte data. The implementation is still new and | |
41 | (particularly on EBCDIC platforms) may need further work. | |
21bad921 | 42 | |
ad0029c4 | 43 | =item C<use utf8> still needed to enable UTF-8/UTF-EBCDIC in scripts |
21bad921 | 44 | |
75daf61c JH |
45 | The C<utf8> pragma implements the tables used for Unicode support. |
46 | These tables are automatically loaded on demand, so the C<utf8> pragma | |
47 | need not normally be used. | |
21bad921 | 48 | |
75daf61c | 49 | However, as a compatibility measure, this pragma must be explicitly |
ad0029c4 JH |
50 | used to enable recognition of UTF-8 in the Perl scripts themselves on |
51 | ASCII based machines or recognize UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC based machines. | |
7dedd01f JH |
52 | B<NOTE: this should be the only place where an explicit C<use utf8> is |
53 | needed>. | |
21bad921 GS |
54 | |
55 | =back | |
56 | ||
57 | =head2 Byte and Character semantics | |
393fec97 GS |
58 | |
59 | Beginning with version 5.6, Perl uses logically wide characters to | |
60 | represent strings internally. This internal representation of strings | |
b3419ed8 | 61 | uses either the UTF-8 or the UTF-EBCDIC encoding. |
393fec97 | 62 | |
75daf61c JH |
63 | In future, Perl-level operations can be expected to work with |
64 | characters rather than bytes, in general. | |
393fec97 | 65 | |
75daf61c JH |
66 | However, as strictly an interim compatibility measure, Perl aims to |
67 | provide a safe migration path from byte semantics to character | |
68 | semantics for programs. For operations where Perl can unambiguously | |
69 | decide that the input data is characters, Perl now switches to | |
70 | character semantics. For operations where this determination cannot | |
71 | be made without additional information from the user, Perl decides in | |
72 | favor of compatibility, and chooses to use byte semantics. | |
8cbd9a7a GS |
73 | |
74 | This behavior preserves compatibility with earlier versions of Perl, | |
75 | which allowed byte semantics in Perl operations, but only as long as | |
76 | none of the program's inputs are marked as being as source of Unicode | |
77 | character data. Such data may come from filehandles, from calls to | |
78 | external programs, from information provided by the system (such as %ENV), | |
21bad921 | 79 | or from literals and constants in the source text. |
8cbd9a7a | 80 | |
75daf61c JH |
81 | If the C<-C> command line switch is used, (or the |
82 | ${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS} global flag is set to C<1>), all system calls | |
83 | will use the corresponding wide character APIs. Note that this is | |
84 | currently only implemented on Windows since other platforms API | |
85 | standard on this area. | |
8cbd9a7a | 86 | |
75daf61c JH |
87 | Regardless of the above, the C<bytes> pragma can always be used to |
88 | force byte semantics in a particular lexical scope. See L<bytes>. | |
8cbd9a7a GS |
89 | |
90 | The C<utf8> pragma is primarily a compatibility device that enables | |
75daf61c | 91 | recognition of UTF-(8|EBCDIC) in literals encountered by the parser. |
7dedd01f JH |
92 | Note that this pragma is only required until a future version of Perl |
93 | in which character semantics will become the default. This pragma may | |
94 | then become a no-op. See L<utf8>. | |
8cbd9a7a GS |
95 | |
96 | Unless mentioned otherwise, Perl operators will use character semantics | |
97 | when they are dealing with Unicode data, and byte semantics otherwise. | |
98 | Thus, character semantics for these operations apply transparently; if | |
99 | the input data came from a Unicode source (for example, by adding a | |
100 | character encoding discipline to the filehandle whence it came, or a | |
101 | literal UTF-8 string constant in the program), character semantics | |
102 | apply; otherwise, byte semantics are in effect. To force byte semantics | |
8058d7ab | 103 | on Unicode data, the C<bytes> pragma should be used. |
393fec97 | 104 | |
7dedd01f JH |
105 | Notice that if you have a string with byte semantics and you then |
106 | add character data into it, the bytes will be upgraded I<as if they | |
107 | were ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1)> (or if in EBCDIC, after a translation | |
108 | to ISO 8859-1). | |
109 | ||
393fec97 | 110 | Under character semantics, many operations that formerly operated on |
75daf61c JH |
111 | bytes change to operating on characters. For ASCII data this makes no |
112 | difference, because UTF-8 stores ASCII in single bytes, but for any | |
113 | character greater than C<chr(127)>, the character B<may> be stored in | |
393fec97 | 114 | a sequence of two or more bytes, all of which have the high bit set. |
2796c109 JH |
115 | |
116 | For C1 controls or Latin 1 characters on an EBCDIC platform the | |
117 | character may be stored in a UTF-EBCDIC multi byte sequence. But by | |
118 | and large, the user need not worry about this, because Perl hides it | |
119 | from the user. A character in Perl is logically just a number ranging | |
120 | from 0 to 2**32 or so. Larger characters encode to longer sequences | |
121 | of bytes internally, but again, this is just an internal detail which | |
122 | is hidden at the Perl level. | |
393fec97 | 123 | |
8cbd9a7a | 124 | =head2 Effects of character semantics |
393fec97 GS |
125 | |
126 | Character semantics have the following effects: | |
127 | ||
128 | =over 4 | |
129 | ||
130 | =item * | |
131 | ||
132 | Strings and patterns may contain characters that have an ordinal value | |
21bad921 | 133 | larger than 255. |
393fec97 | 134 | |
75daf61c JH |
135 | Presuming you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, such |
136 | characters will typically occur directly within the literal strings as | |
137 | UTF-8 (or UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC platforms) characters, but you can also | |
138 | specify a particular character with an extension of the C<\x> | |
139 | notation. UTF-X characters are specified by putting the hexadecimal | |
140 | code within curlies after the C<\x>. For instance, a Unicode smiley | |
141 | face is C<\x{263A}>. | |
393fec97 GS |
142 | |
143 | =item * | |
144 | ||
145 | Identifiers within the Perl script may contain Unicode alphanumeric | |
146 | characters, including ideographs. (You are currently on your own when | |
75daf61c JH |
147 | it comes to using the canonical forms of characters--Perl doesn't |
148 | (yet) attempt to canonicalize variable names for you.) | |
393fec97 | 149 | |
393fec97 GS |
150 | =item * |
151 | ||
152 | Regular expressions match characters instead of bytes. For instance, | |
153 | "." matches a character instead of a byte. (However, the C<\C> pattern | |
75daf61c | 154 | is provided to force a match a single byte ("C<char>" in C, hence C<\C>).) |
393fec97 | 155 | |
393fec97 GS |
156 | =item * |
157 | ||
158 | Character classes in regular expressions match characters instead of | |
159 | bytes, and match against the character properties specified in the | |
75daf61c JH |
160 | Unicode properties database. So C<\w> can be used to match an |
161 | ideograph, for instance. | |
393fec97 | 162 | |
393fec97 GS |
163 | =item * |
164 | ||
165 | Named Unicode properties and block ranges make be used as character | |
166 | classes via the new C<\p{}> (matches property) and C<\P{}> (doesn't | |
167 | match property) constructs. For instance, C<\p{Lu}> matches any | |
168 | character with the Unicode uppercase property, while C<\p{M}> matches | |
9fdf68be JH |
169 | any mark character. Single letter properties may omit the brackets, |
170 | so that can be written C<\pM> also. Many predefined character classes | |
a1cc1cb1 | 171 | are available, such as C<\p{IsMirrored}> and C<\p{InTibetan}>. |
4193bef7 JH |
172 | |
173 | The C<\p{Is...}> test for "general properties" such as "letter", | |
174 | "digit", while the C<\p{In...}> test for Unicode scripts and blocks. | |
175 | ||
176 | The official Unicode script and block names have spaces and | |
177 | dashes and separators, but for convenience you can have | |
178 | dashes, spaces, and underbars at every word division, and | |
179 | you need not care about correct casing. It is recommended, | |
180 | however, that for consistency you use the following naming: | |
181 | the official Unicode script or block name (see below for | |
182 | the additional rules that apply to block names), with the whitespace | |
183 | and dashes removed, and the words "uppercase-first-lowercase-otherwise". | |
184 | That is, "Latin-1 Supplement" becomes "Latin1Supplement". | |
185 | ||
a1cc1cb1 JH |
186 | You can also negate both C<\p{}> and C<\P{}> by introducing a caret |
187 | (^) between the first curly and the property name: C<\p{^InTamil}> is | |
4193bef7 JH |
188 | equal to C<\P{InTamil}>. |
189 | ||
61247495 JH |
190 | The C<In> and C<Is> can be left out: C<\p{Greek}> is equal to |
191 | C<\p{InGreek}>, C<\P{Pd}> is equal to C<\P{Pd}>. | |
393fec97 | 192 | |
d73e5302 JH |
193 | Short Long |
194 | ||
195 | L Letter | |
196 | Lu Uppercase Letter | |
197 | Ll Lowercase Letter | |
198 | Lt Titlecase Letter | |
199 | Lm Modifier Letter | |
200 | Lo Other Letter | |
201 | ||
202 | M Mark | |
203 | Mn Non-Spacing Mark | |
204 | Mc Spacing Combining Mark | |
205 | Me Enclosing Mark | |
206 | ||
207 | N Number | |
208 | Nd Decimal Digit Number | |
209 | Nl Letter Number | |
210 | No Other Number | |
211 | ||
212 | P Punctuation | |
213 | Pc Connector Punctuation | |
214 | Pd Dash Punctuation | |
215 | Ps Open Punctuation | |
216 | Pe Close Punctuation | |
217 | Pi Initial Punctuation | |
218 | (may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage) | |
219 | Pf Final Punctuation | |
220 | (may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage) | |
221 | Po Other Punctuation | |
222 | ||
223 | S Symbol | |
224 | Sm Math Symbol | |
225 | Sc Currency Symbol | |
226 | Sk Modifier Symbol | |
227 | So Other Symbol | |
228 | ||
229 | Z Separator | |
230 | Zs Space Separator | |
231 | Zl Line Separator | |
232 | Zp Paragraph Separator | |
233 | ||
234 | C Other | |
235 | Cc (Other) Control | |
236 | Cf (Other) Format | |
237 | Cs (Other) Surrogate | |
238 | Co (Other) Private Use | |
239 | Cn (Other) Not Assigned | |
1ac13f9a JH |
240 | |
241 | There's also C<L&> which is an alias for C<Ll>, C<Lu>, and C<Lt>. | |
32293815 | 242 | |
d73e5302 JH |
243 | The following reserved ranges have C<In> tests: |
244 | ||
245 | CJK Ideograph Extension A | |
246 | CJK Ideograph | |
247 | Hangul Syllable | |
248 | Non Private Use High Surrogate | |
249 | Private Use High Surrogate | |
250 | Low Surrogate | |
251 | Private Surrogate | |
252 | CJK Ideograph Extension B | |
a63942c2 JH |
253 | Plane 15 Private Use |
254 | Plane 16 Private Use | |
d73e5302 JH |
255 | |
256 | For example C<"\x{AC00}" =~ \p{HangulSyllable}> will test true. | |
257 | (Handling of surrogates is not implemented yet.) | |
258 | ||
32293815 JH |
259 | Additionally, because scripts differ in their directionality |
260 | (for example Hebrew is written right to left), all characters | |
261 | have their directionality defined: | |
262 | ||
d73e5302 JH |
263 | BidiL Left-to-Right |
264 | BidiLRE Left-to-Right Embedding | |
265 | BidiLRO Left-to-Right Override | |
266 | BidiR Right-to-Left | |
267 | BidiAL Right-to-Left Arabic | |
268 | BidiRLE Right-to-Left Embedding | |
269 | BidiRLO Right-to-Left Override | |
270 | BidiPDF Pop Directional Format | |
271 | BidiEN European Number | |
272 | BidiES European Number Separator | |
273 | BidiET European Number Terminator | |
274 | BidiAN Arabic Number | |
275 | BidiCS Common Number Separator | |
276 | BidiNSM Non-Spacing Mark | |
277 | BidiBN Boundary Neutral | |
278 | BidiB Paragraph Separator | |
279 | BidiS Segment Separator | |
280 | BidiWS Whitespace | |
281 | BidiON Other Neutrals | |
32293815 | 282 | |
2796c109 JH |
283 | =head2 Scripts |
284 | ||
75daf61c JH |
285 | The scripts available for C<\p{In...}> and C<\P{In...}>, for example |
286 | \p{InCyrillic>, are as follows, for example C<\p{InLatin}> or C<\P{InHan}>: | |
2796c109 | 287 | |
1ac13f9a JH |
288 | Latin |
289 | Greek | |
290 | Cyrillic | |
291 | Armenian | |
292 | Hebrew | |
293 | Arabic | |
294 | Syriac | |
295 | Thaana | |
296 | Devanagari | |
297 | Bengali | |
298 | Gurmukhi | |
299 | Gujarati | |
300 | Oriya | |
301 | Tamil | |
302 | Telugu | |
303 | Kannada | |
304 | Malayalam | |
305 | Sinhala | |
306 | Thai | |
307 | Lao | |
308 | Tibetan | |
309 | Myanmar | |
310 | Georgian | |
311 | Hangul | |
312 | Ethiopic | |
313 | Cherokee | |
314 | CanadianAboriginal | |
315 | Ogham | |
316 | Runic | |
317 | Khmer | |
318 | Mongolian | |
319 | Hiragana | |
320 | Katakana | |
321 | Bopomofo | |
322 | Han | |
323 | Yi | |
324 | OldItalic | |
325 | Gothic | |
326 | Deseret | |
327 | Inherited | |
328 | ||
329 | There are also extended property classes that supplement the basic | |
330 | properties, defined by the F<PropList> Unicode database: | |
331 | ||
332 | White_space | |
333 | Bidi_Control | |
334 | Join_Control | |
335 | Dash | |
336 | Hyphen | |
337 | Quotation_Mark | |
338 | Other_Math | |
339 | Hex_Digit | |
340 | ASCII_Hex_Digit | |
341 | Other_Alphabetic | |
342 | Ideographic | |
343 | Diacritic | |
344 | Extender | |
345 | Other_Lowercase | |
346 | Other_Uppercase | |
347 | Noncharacter_Code_Point | |
348 | ||
349 | and further derived properties: | |
350 | ||
351 | Alphabetic Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Other_Alphabetic | |
352 | Lowercase Ll + Other_Lowercase | |
353 | Uppercase Lu + Other_Uppercase | |
354 | Math Sm + Other_Math | |
355 | ||
356 | ID_Start Lu + Ll + Lt + Lm + Lo + Nl | |
357 | ID_Continue ID_Start + Mn + Mc + Nd + Pc | |
358 | ||
359 | Any Any character | |
360 | Assigned Any non-Cn character | |
361 | Common Any character (or unassigned code point) | |
362 | not explicitly assigned to a script. | |
2796c109 JH |
363 | |
364 | =head2 Blocks | |
365 | ||
366 | In addition to B<scripts>, Unicode also defines B<blocks> of | |
367 | characters. The difference between scripts and blocks is that the | |
368 | former concept is closer to natural languages, while the latter | |
369 | concept is more an artificial grouping based on groups of 256 Unicode | |
370 | characters. For example, the C<Latin> script contains letters from | |
371 | many blocks, but it does not contain all the characters from those | |
372 | blocks, it does not for example contain digits. | |
373 | ||
374 | For more about scripts see the UTR #24: | |
375 | http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr24/ | |
376 | For more about blocks see | |
377 | http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/Blocks.txt | |
378 | ||
379 | Because there are overlaps in naming (there are, for example, both | |
380 | a script called C<Katakana> and a block called C<Katakana>, the block | |
381 | version has C<Block> appended to its name, C<\p{InKatakanaBlock}>. | |
382 | ||
383 | Notice that this definition was introduced in Perl 5.8.0: in Perl | |
384 | 5.6.0 only the blocks were used; in Perl 5.8.0 scripts became the | |
61247495 JH |
385 | preferential Unicode character class definition; this meant that |
386 | the definitions of some character classes changed (the ones in the | |
2796c109 JH |
387 | below list that have the C<Block> appended). |
388 | ||
389 | BasicLatin | |
390 | Latin1Supplement | |
391 | LatinExtendedA | |
392 | LatinExtendedB | |
393 | IPAExtensions | |
394 | SpacingModifierLetters | |
395 | CombiningDiacriticalMarks | |
396 | GreekBlock | |
397 | CyrillicBlock | |
398 | ArmenianBlock | |
399 | HebrewBlock | |
400 | ArabicBlock | |
401 | SyriacBlock | |
402 | ThaanaBlock | |
403 | DevanagariBlock | |
404 | BengaliBlock | |
405 | GurmukhiBlock | |
406 | GujaratiBlock | |
407 | OriyaBlock | |
408 | TamilBlock | |
409 | TeluguBlock | |
410 | KannadaBlock | |
411 | MalayalamBlock | |
412 | SinhalaBlock | |
413 | ThaiBlock | |
414 | LaoBlock | |
415 | TibetanBlock | |
416 | MyanmarBlock | |
417 | GeorgianBlock | |
418 | HangulJamo | |
419 | EthiopicBlock | |
420 | CherokeeBlock | |
421 | UnifiedCanadianAboriginalSyllabics | |
422 | OghamBlock | |
423 | RunicBlock | |
424 | KhmerBlock | |
425 | MongolianBlock | |
426 | LatinExtendedAdditional | |
427 | GreekExtended | |
428 | GeneralPunctuation | |
429 | SuperscriptsandSubscripts | |
430 | CurrencySymbols | |
431 | CombiningMarksforSymbols | |
432 | LetterlikeSymbols | |
433 | NumberForms | |
434 | Arrows | |
435 | MathematicalOperators | |
436 | MiscellaneousTechnical | |
437 | ControlPictures | |
438 | OpticalCharacterRecognition | |
439 | EnclosedAlphanumerics | |
440 | BoxDrawing | |
441 | BlockElements | |
442 | GeometricShapes | |
443 | MiscellaneousSymbols | |
444 | Dingbats | |
445 | BraillePatterns | |
446 | CJKRadicalsSupplement | |
447 | KangxiRadicals | |
448 | IdeographicDescriptionCharacters | |
449 | CJKSymbolsandPunctuation | |
450 | HiraganaBlock | |
451 | KatakanaBlock | |
452 | BopomofoBlock | |
453 | HangulCompatibilityJamo | |
454 | Kanbun | |
455 | BopomofoExtended | |
456 | EnclosedCJKLettersandMonths | |
457 | CJKCompatibility | |
458 | CJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionA | |
459 | CJKUnifiedIdeographs | |
460 | YiSyllables | |
461 | YiRadicals | |
462 | HangulSyllables | |
463 | HighSurrogates | |
464 | HighPrivateUseSurrogates | |
465 | LowSurrogates | |
466 | PrivateUse | |
467 | CJKCompatibilityIdeographs | |
468 | AlphabeticPresentationForms | |
469 | ArabicPresentationFormsA | |
470 | CombiningHalfMarks | |
471 | CJKCompatibilityForms | |
472 | SmallFormVariants | |
473 | ArabicPresentationFormsB | |
474 | Specials | |
475 | HalfwidthandFullwidthForms | |
476 | OldItalicBlock | |
477 | GothicBlock | |
478 | DeseretBlock | |
479 | ByzantineMusicalSymbols | |
480 | MusicalSymbols | |
481 | MathematicalAlphanumericSymbols | |
482 | CJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionB | |
483 | CJKCompatibilityIdeographsSupplement | |
484 | Tags | |
32293815 | 485 | |
393fec97 GS |
486 | =item * |
487 | ||
488 | The special pattern C<\X> match matches any extended Unicode sequence | |
489 | (a "combining character sequence" in Standardese), where the first | |
490 | character is a base character and subsequent characters are mark | |
491 | characters that apply to the base character. It is equivalent to | |
492 | C<(?:\PM\pM*)>. | |
493 | ||
393fec97 GS |
494 | =item * |
495 | ||
383e7cdd JH |
496 | The C<tr///> operator translates characters instead of bytes. Note |
497 | that the C<tr///CU> functionality has been removed, as the interface | |
498 | was a mistake. For similar functionality see pack('U0', ...) and | |
499 | pack('C0', ...). | |
393fec97 | 500 | |
393fec97 GS |
501 | =item * |
502 | ||
503 | Case translation operators use the Unicode case translation tables | |
504 | when provided character input. Note that C<uc()> translates to | |
505 | uppercase, while C<ucfirst> translates to titlecase (for languages | |
506 | that make the distinction). Naturally the corresponding backslash | |
507 | sequences have the same semantics. | |
508 | ||
509 | =item * | |
510 | ||
511 | Most operators that deal with positions or lengths in the string will | |
75daf61c JH |
512 | automatically switch to using character positions, including |
513 | C<chop()>, C<substr()>, C<pos()>, C<index()>, C<rindex()>, | |
514 | C<sprintf()>, C<write()>, and C<length()>. Operators that | |
515 | specifically don't switch include C<vec()>, C<pack()>, and | |
516 | C<unpack()>. Operators that really don't care include C<chomp()>, as | |
517 | well as any other operator that treats a string as a bucket of bits, | |
518 | such as C<sort()>, and the operators dealing with filenames. | |
393fec97 GS |
519 | |
520 | =item * | |
521 | ||
522 | The C<pack()>/C<unpack()> letters "C<c>" and "C<C>" do I<not> change, | |
523 | since they're often used for byte-oriented formats. (Again, think | |
524 | "C<char>" in the C language.) However, there is a new "C<U>" specifier | |
525 | that will convert between UTF-8 characters and integers. (It works | |
526 | outside of the utf8 pragma too.) | |
527 | ||
528 | =item * | |
529 | ||
530 | The C<chr()> and C<ord()> functions work on characters. This is like | |
531 | C<pack("U")> and C<unpack("U")>, not like C<pack("C")> and | |
532 | C<unpack("C")>. In fact, the latter are how you now emulate | |
35bcd338 JH |
533 | byte-oriented C<chr()> and C<ord()> for Unicode strings. |
534 | (Note that this reveals the internal UTF-8 encoding of strings and | |
535 | you are not supposed to do that unless you know what you are doing.) | |
393fec97 GS |
536 | |
537 | =item * | |
538 | ||
a1ca4561 YST |
539 | The bit string operators C<& | ^ ~> can operate on character data. |
540 | However, for backward compatibility reasons (bit string operations | |
75daf61c JH |
541 | when the characters all are less than 256 in ordinal value) one should |
542 | not mix C<~> (the bit complement) and characters both less than 256 and | |
a1ca4561 YST |
543 | equal or greater than 256. Most importantly, the DeMorgan's laws |
544 | (C<~($x|$y) eq ~$x&~$y>, C<~($x&$y) eq ~$x|~$y>) won't hold. | |
545 | Another way to look at this is that the complement cannot return | |
75daf61c | 546 | B<both> the 8-bit (byte) wide bit complement B<and> the full character |
a1ca4561 YST |
547 | wide bit complement. |
548 | ||
549 | =item * | |
550 | ||
6f16a292 JH |
551 | lc(), uc(), lcfirst(), and ucfirst() work only for some of the |
552 | simplest cases, where the mapping goes from a single Unicode character | |
03e60089 JH |
553 | to another single Unicode character, and where the mapping does not |
554 | depend on surrounding characters, or on locales. More complex cases, | |
555 | where for example one character maps into several, are not yet | |
556 | implemented. See the Unicode Technical Report #21, Case Mappings, | |
557 | for more details. The Unicode::UCD module (part of Perl since 5.8.0) | |
558 | casespec() and casefold() interfaces supply information about the more | |
559 | complex cases. | |
ac1256e8 JH |
560 | |
561 | =item * | |
562 | ||
393fec97 GS |
563 | And finally, C<scalar reverse()> reverses by character rather than by byte. |
564 | ||
565 | =back | |
566 | ||
8cbd9a7a GS |
567 | =head2 Character encodings for input and output |
568 | ||
7221edc9 | 569 | See L<Encode>. |
8cbd9a7a | 570 | |
393fec97 GS |
571 | =head1 CAVEATS |
572 | ||
573 | As of yet, there is no method for automatically coercing input and | |
b3419ed8 PK |
574 | output to some encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC. This is planned |
575 | in the near future, however. | |
393fec97 | 576 | |
8cbd9a7a GS |
577 | Whether an arbitrary piece of data will be treated as "characters" or |
578 | "bytes" by internal operations cannot be divined at the current time. | |
393fec97 GS |
579 | |
580 | Use of locales with utf8 may lead to odd results. Currently there is | |
581 | some attempt to apply 8-bit locale info to characters in the range | |
582 | 0..255, but this is demonstrably incorrect for locales that use | |
583 | characters above that range (when mapped into Unicode). It will also | |
584 | tend to run slower. Avoidance of locales is strongly encouraged. | |
585 | ||
776f8809 JH |
586 | =head1 UNICODE REGULAR EXPRESSION SUPPORT LEVEL |
587 | ||
588 | The following list of Unicode regular expression support describes | |
589 | feature by feature the Unicode support implemented in Perl as of Perl | |
590 | 5.8.0. The "Level N" and the section numbers refer to the Unicode | |
591 | Technical Report 18, "Unicode Regular Expression Guidelines". | |
592 | ||
593 | =over 4 | |
594 | ||
595 | =item * | |
596 | ||
597 | Level 1 - Basic Unicode Support | |
598 | ||
599 | 2.1 Hex Notation - done [1] | |
600 | Named Notation - done [2] | |
601 | 2.2 Categories - done [3][4] | |
602 | 2.3 Subtraction - MISSING [5][6] | |
603 | 2.4 Simple Word Boundaries - done [7] | |
604 | 2.5 Simple Loose Matches - MISSING [8] | |
605 | 2.6 End of Line - MISSING [9][10] | |
606 | ||
607 | [ 1] \x{...} | |
608 | [ 2] \N{...} | |
609 | [ 3] . \p{Is...} \P{Is...} | |
610 | [ 4] now scripts (see UTR#24 Script Names) in addition to blocks | |
611 | [ 5] have negation | |
612 | [ 6] can use look-ahead to emulate subtracion | |
613 | [ 7] include Letters in word characters | |
614 | [ 8] see UTR#21 Case Mappings | |
615 | [ 9] see UTR#13 Unicode Newline Guidelines | |
616 | [10] should do ^ and $ also on \x{2028} and \x{2029} | |
617 | ||
618 | =item * | |
619 | ||
620 | Level 2 - Extended Unicode Support | |
621 | ||
622 | 3.1 Surrogates - MISSING | |
623 | 3.2 Canonical Equivalents - MISSING [11][12] | |
624 | 3.3 Locale-Independent Graphemes - MISSING [13] | |
625 | 3.4 Locale-Independent Words - MISSING [14] | |
626 | 3.5 Locale-Independent Loose Matches - MISSING [15] | |
627 | ||
628 | [11] see UTR#15 Unicode Normalization | |
629 | [12] have Unicode::Normalize but not integrated to regexes | |
630 | [13] have \X but at this level . should equal that | |
631 | [14] need three classes, not just \w and \W | |
632 | [15] see UTR#21 Case Mappings | |
633 | ||
634 | =item * | |
635 | ||
636 | Level 3 - Locale-Sensitive Support | |
637 | ||
638 | 4.1 Locale-Dependent Categories - MISSING | |
639 | 4.2 Locale-Dependent Graphemes - MISSING [16][17] | |
640 | 4.3 Locale-Dependent Words - MISSING | |
641 | 4.4 Locale-Dependent Loose Matches - MISSING | |
642 | 4.5 Locale-Dependent Ranges - MISSING | |
643 | ||
644 | [16] see UTR#10 Unicode Collation Algorithms | |
645 | [17] have Unicode::Collate but not integrated to regexes | |
646 | ||
647 | =back | |
648 | ||
393fec97 GS |
649 | =head1 SEE ALSO |
650 | ||
32293815 | 651 | L<bytes>, L<utf8>, L<perlretut>, L<perlvar/"${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS}"> |
393fec97 GS |
652 | |
653 | =cut |