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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 | |
0a1f2d14 NIS |
9 | WARNING: While the implementation of Unicode support in Perl is now fairly |
10 | complete it is still evolving to some extent. | |
21bad921 | 11 | |
0a1f2d14 NIS |
12 | In particular the way Unicode is handled on EBCDIC platforms is still rather |
13 | experimental. On such a platform references to UTF-8 encoding in this | |
14 | document and elsewhere should be read as meaning UTF-EBCDIC as specified | |
15 | in Unicode Technical Report 16 unless ASCII vs EBCDIC issues are specifically | |
16 | discussed. There is no C<utfebcdic> pragma or ":utfebcdic" layer, rather | |
17 | "utf8" and ":utf8" are re-used to mean platform's "natural" 8-bit encoding | |
18 | of Unicode. See L<perlebcdic> for more discussion of the issues. | |
19 | ||
20 | The following areas are still under development. | |
21bad921 | 21 | |
13a2d996 | 22 | =over 4 |
21bad921 GS |
23 | |
24 | =item Input and Output Disciplines | |
25 | ||
0a1f2d14 NIS |
26 | A filehandle can be marked as containing perl's internal Unicode encoding |
27 | (UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC) by opening it with the ":utf8" layer. | |
28 | Other encodings can be converted to perl's encoding on input, or from | |
29 | perl's encoding on output by use of the ":encoding()" layer. | |
30 | There is not yet a clean way to mark the perl source itself as being | |
31 | in an particular encoding. | |
21bad921 GS |
32 | |
33 | =item Regular Expressions | |
34 | ||
e6739005 JH |
35 | The regular expression compiler does now attempt to produce |
36 | polymorphic opcodes. That is the pattern should now adapt to the data | |
37 | and automatically switch to the Unicode character scheme when presented | |
38 | with Unicode data, or a traditional byte scheme when presented with | |
39 | byte data. The implementation is still new and (particularly on | |
40 | EBCDIC platforms) may need further work. | |
21bad921 GS |
41 | |
42 | =item C<use utf8> still needed to enable a few features | |
43 | ||
44 | The C<utf8> pragma implements the tables used for Unicode support. These | |
45 | tables are automatically loaded on demand, so the C<utf8> pragma need not | |
46 | normally be used. | |
47 | ||
48 | However, as a compatibility measure, this pragma must be explicitly used | |
49 | to enable recognition of UTF-8 encoded literals and identifiers in the | |
b3419ed8 PK |
50 | source text on ASCII based machines or recognize UTF-EBCDIC encoded literals |
51 | and identifiers on EBCDIC based machines. | |
21bad921 GS |
52 | |
53 | =back | |
54 | ||
55 | =head2 Byte and Character semantics | |
393fec97 GS |
56 | |
57 | Beginning with version 5.6, Perl uses logically wide characters to | |
58 | represent strings internally. This internal representation of strings | |
b3419ed8 | 59 | uses either the UTF-8 or the UTF-EBCDIC encoding. |
393fec97 | 60 | |
21bad921 | 61 | In future, Perl-level operations can be expected to work with characters |
393fec97 GS |
62 | rather than bytes, in general. |
63 | ||
8cbd9a7a GS |
64 | However, as strictly an interim compatibility measure, Perl v5.6 aims to |
65 | provide a safe migration path from byte semantics to character semantics | |
66 | for programs. For operations where Perl can unambiguously decide that the | |
67 | input data is characters, Perl now switches to character semantics. | |
68 | For operations where this determination cannot be made without additional | |
69 | information from the user, Perl decides in favor of compatibility, and | |
70 | chooses to use byte semantics. | |
71 | ||
72 | This behavior preserves compatibility with earlier versions of Perl, | |
73 | which allowed byte semantics in Perl operations, but only as long as | |
74 | none of the program's inputs are marked as being as source of Unicode | |
75 | character data. Such data may come from filehandles, from calls to | |
76 | external programs, from information provided by the system (such as %ENV), | |
21bad921 | 77 | or from literals and constants in the source text. |
8cbd9a7a | 78 | |
46487f74 GS |
79 | If the C<-C> command line switch is used, (or the ${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS} |
80 | global flag is set to C<1>), all system calls will use the | |
3969a896 | 81 | corresponding wide character APIs. This is currently only implemented |
e6739005 | 82 | on Windows since UNIXes lack API standard on this area. |
8cbd9a7a | 83 | |
8058d7ab GS |
84 | Regardless of the above, the C<bytes> pragma can always be used to force |
85 | byte semantics in a particular lexical scope. See L<bytes>. | |
8cbd9a7a GS |
86 | |
87 | The C<utf8> pragma is primarily a compatibility device that enables | |
b3419ed8 | 88 | recognition of UTF-(8|EBCDIC) in literals encountered by the parser. It may also |
21bad921 | 89 | be used for enabling some of the more experimental Unicode support features. |
8cbd9a7a GS |
90 | Note that this pragma is only required until a future version of Perl |
91 | in which character semantics will become the default. This pragma may | |
92 | then become a no-op. See L<utf8>. | |
93 | ||
94 | Unless mentioned otherwise, Perl operators will use character semantics | |
95 | when they are dealing with Unicode data, and byte semantics otherwise. | |
96 | Thus, character semantics for these operations apply transparently; if | |
97 | the input data came from a Unicode source (for example, by adding a | |
98 | character encoding discipline to the filehandle whence it came, or a | |
99 | literal UTF-8 string constant in the program), character semantics | |
100 | apply; otherwise, byte semantics are in effect. To force byte semantics | |
8058d7ab | 101 | on Unicode data, the C<bytes> pragma should be used. |
393fec97 GS |
102 | |
103 | Under character semantics, many operations that formerly operated on | |
104 | bytes change to operating on characters. For ASCII data this makes | |
105 | no difference, because UTF-8 stores ASCII in single bytes, but for | |
21bad921 | 106 | any character greater than C<chr(127)>, the character may be stored in |
393fec97 | 107 | a sequence of two or more bytes, all of which have the high bit set. |
b3419ed8 PK |
108 | For C1 controls or Latin 1 characters on an EBCDIC platform the character |
109 | may be stored in a UTF-EBCDIC multi byte sequence. | |
393fec97 GS |
110 | But by and large, the user need not worry about this, because Perl |
111 | hides it from the user. A character in Perl is logically just a number | |
112 | ranging from 0 to 2**32 or so. Larger characters encode to longer | |
113 | sequences of bytes internally, but again, this is just an internal | |
114 | detail which is hidden at the Perl level. | |
115 | ||
8cbd9a7a | 116 | =head2 Effects of character semantics |
393fec97 GS |
117 | |
118 | Character semantics have the following effects: | |
119 | ||
120 | =over 4 | |
121 | ||
122 | =item * | |
123 | ||
124 | Strings and patterns may contain characters that have an ordinal value | |
21bad921 | 125 | larger than 255. |
393fec97 GS |
126 | |
127 | Presuming you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, such characters | |
b3419ed8 | 128 | will typically occur directly within the literal strings as UTF-(8|EBCDIC) |
393fec97 | 129 | characters, but you can also specify a particular character with an |
b3419ed8 | 130 | extension of the C<\x> notation. UTF-X characters are specified by |
393fec97 | 131 | putting the hexadecimal code within curlies after the C<\x>. For instance, |
4375e838 | 132 | a Unicode smiley face is C<\x{263A}>. |
393fec97 GS |
133 | |
134 | =item * | |
135 | ||
136 | Identifiers within the Perl script may contain Unicode alphanumeric | |
137 | characters, including ideographs. (You are currently on your own when | |
138 | it comes to using the canonical forms of characters--Perl doesn't (yet) | |
139 | attempt to canonicalize variable names for you.) | |
140 | ||
393fec97 GS |
141 | =item * |
142 | ||
143 | Regular expressions match characters instead of bytes. For instance, | |
144 | "." matches a character instead of a byte. (However, the C<\C> pattern | |
945c54fd JH |
145 | is provided to force a match a single byte ("C<char>" in C, hence |
146 | C<\C>).) | |
393fec97 | 147 | |
393fec97 GS |
148 | =item * |
149 | ||
150 | Character classes in regular expressions match characters instead of | |
151 | bytes, and match against the character properties specified in the | |
152 | Unicode properties database. So C<\w> can be used to match an ideograph, | |
153 | for instance. | |
154 | ||
393fec97 GS |
155 | =item * |
156 | ||
157 | Named Unicode properties and block ranges make be used as character | |
158 | classes via the new C<\p{}> (matches property) and C<\P{}> (doesn't | |
159 | match property) constructs. For instance, C<\p{Lu}> matches any | |
160 | character with the Unicode uppercase property, while C<\p{M}> matches | |
9fdf68be JH |
161 | any mark character. Single letter properties may omit the brackets, |
162 | so that can be written C<\pM> also. Many predefined character classes | |
163 | are available, such as C<\p{IsMirrored}> and C<\p{InTibetan}>. The | |
164 | names of the C<In> classes are the official Unicode block names but | |
165 | with all non-alphanumeric characters removed, for example the block | |
166 | name C<"Latin-1 Supplement"> becomes C<\p{InLatin1Supplement}>. | |
393fec97 | 167 | |
32293815 JH |
168 | Here is the list as of Unicode 3.1.0 (the two-letter classes) and |
169 | Perl 5.8.0 (the one-letter classes): | |
170 | ||
171 | L Letter | |
172 | Lu Letter, Uppercase | |
173 | Ll Letter, Lowercase | |
174 | Lt Letter, Titlecase | |
175 | Lm Letter, Modifier | |
176 | Lo Letter, Other | |
177 | M Mark | |
178 | Mn Mark, Non-Spacing | |
179 | Mc Mark, Spacing Combining | |
180 | Me Mark, Enclosing | |
181 | N Number | |
182 | Nd Number, Decimal Digit | |
183 | Nl Number, Letter | |
184 | No Number, Other | |
185 | P Punctuation | |
186 | Pc Punctuation, Connector | |
187 | Pd Punctuation, Dash | |
188 | Ps Punctuation, Open | |
189 | Pe Punctuation, Close | |
190 | Pi Punctuation, Initial quote | |
191 | (may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage) | |
192 | Pf Punctuation, Final quote | |
193 | (may behave like Ps or Pe depending on usage) | |
194 | Po Punctuation, Other | |
195 | S Symbol | |
196 | Sm Symbol, Math | |
197 | Sc Symbol, Currency | |
198 | Sk Symbol, Modifier | |
199 | So Symbol, Other | |
200 | Z Separator | |
201 | Zs Separator, Space | |
202 | Zl Separator, Line | |
203 | Zp Separator, Paragraph | |
204 | C Other | |
205 | Cc Other, Control | |
206 | Cf Other, Format | |
207 | Cs Other, Surrogate | |
208 | Co Other, Private Use | |
209 | Cn Other, Not Assigned (Unicode defines no Cn characters) | |
210 | ||
211 | Additionally, because scripts differ in their directionality | |
212 | (for example Hebrew is written right to left), all characters | |
213 | have their directionality defined: | |
214 | ||
215 | BidiL Left-to-Right | |
216 | BidiLRE Left-to-Right Embedding | |
217 | BidiLRO Left-to-Right Override | |
218 | BidiR Right-to-Left | |
219 | BidiAL Right-to-Left Arabic | |
220 | BidiRLE Right-to-Left Embedding | |
221 | BidiRLO Right-to-Left Override | |
222 | BidiPDF Pop Directional Format | |
223 | BidiEN European Number | |
224 | BidiES European Number Separator | |
225 | BidiET European Number Terminator | |
226 | BidiAN Arabic Number | |
227 | BidiCS Common Number Separator | |
228 | BidiNSM Non-Spacing Mark | |
229 | BidiBN Boundary Neutral | |
230 | BidiB Paragraph Separator | |
231 | BidiS Segment Separator | |
232 | BidiWS Whitespace | |
233 | BidiON Other Neutrals | |
234 | ||
235 | The blocks available for C<\p{InBlock}> and C<\P{InBlock}>, for | |
236 | example \p{InCyrillic>, are as follows: | |
237 | ||
238 | BasicLatin | |
239 | Latin1Supplement | |
240 | LatinExtendedA | |
241 | LatinExtendedB | |
242 | IPAExtensions | |
243 | SpacingModifierLetters | |
244 | CombiningDiacriticalMarks | |
245 | Greek | |
246 | Cyrillic | |
247 | Armenian | |
248 | Hebrew | |
249 | Arabic | |
250 | Syriac | |
251 | Thaana | |
252 | Devanagari | |
253 | Bengali | |
254 | Gurmukhi | |
255 | Gujarati | |
256 | Oriya | |
257 | Tamil | |
258 | Telugu | |
259 | Kannada | |
260 | Malayalam | |
261 | Sinhala | |
262 | Thai | |
263 | Lao | |
264 | Tibetan | |
265 | Myanmar | |
266 | Georgian | |
267 | HangulJamo | |
268 | Ethiopic | |
269 | Cherokee | |
270 | UnifiedCanadianAboriginalSyllabics | |
271 | Ogham | |
272 | Runic | |
273 | Khmer | |
274 | Mongolian | |
275 | LatinExtendedAdditional | |
276 | GreekExtended | |
277 | GeneralPunctuation | |
278 | SuperscriptsandSubscripts | |
279 | CurrencySymbols | |
280 | CombiningMarksforSymbols | |
281 | LetterlikeSymbols | |
282 | NumberForms | |
283 | Arrows | |
284 | MathematicalOperators | |
285 | MiscellaneousTechnical | |
286 | ControlPictures | |
287 | OpticalCharacterRecognition | |
288 | EnclosedAlphanumerics | |
289 | BoxDrawing | |
290 | BlockElements | |
291 | GeometricShapes | |
292 | MiscellaneousSymbols | |
293 | Dingbats | |
294 | BraillePatterns | |
295 | CJKRadicalsSupplement | |
296 | KangxiRadicals | |
297 | IdeographicDescriptionCharacters | |
298 | CJKSymbolsandPunctuation | |
299 | Hiragana | |
300 | Katakana | |
301 | Bopomofo | |
302 | HangulCompatibilityJamo | |
303 | Kanbun | |
304 | BopomofoExtended | |
305 | EnclosedCJKLettersandMonths | |
306 | CJKCompatibility | |
307 | CJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionA | |
308 | CJKUnifiedIdeographs | |
309 | YiSyllables | |
310 | YiRadicals | |
311 | HangulSyllables | |
312 | HighSurrogates | |
313 | HighPrivateUseSurrogates | |
314 | LowSurrogates | |
315 | PrivateUse | |
316 | CJKCompatibilityIdeographs | |
317 | AlphabeticPresentationForms | |
318 | ArabicPresentationFormsA | |
319 | CombiningHalfMarks | |
320 | CJKCompatibilityForms | |
321 | SmallFormVariants | |
322 | ArabicPresentationFormsB | |
323 | Specials | |
324 | HalfwidthandFullwidthForms | |
325 | OldItalic | |
326 | Gothic | |
327 | Deseret | |
328 | ByzantineMusicalSymbols | |
329 | MusicalSymbols | |
330 | MathematicalAlphanumericSymbols | |
331 | CJKUnifiedIdeographsExtensionB | |
332 | CJKCompatibilityIdeographsSupplement | |
333 | Tags | |
334 | ||
393fec97 GS |
335 | =item * |
336 | ||
337 | The special pattern C<\X> match matches any extended Unicode sequence | |
338 | (a "combining character sequence" in Standardese), where the first | |
339 | character is a base character and subsequent characters are mark | |
340 | characters that apply to the base character. It is equivalent to | |
341 | C<(?:\PM\pM*)>. | |
342 | ||
393fec97 GS |
343 | =item * |
344 | ||
383e7cdd JH |
345 | The C<tr///> operator translates characters instead of bytes. Note |
346 | that the C<tr///CU> functionality has been removed, as the interface | |
347 | was a mistake. For similar functionality see pack('U0', ...) and | |
348 | pack('C0', ...). | |
393fec97 | 349 | |
393fec97 GS |
350 | =item * |
351 | ||
352 | Case translation operators use the Unicode case translation tables | |
353 | when provided character input. Note that C<uc()> translates to | |
354 | uppercase, while C<ucfirst> translates to titlecase (for languages | |
355 | that make the distinction). Naturally the corresponding backslash | |
356 | sequences have the same semantics. | |
357 | ||
358 | =item * | |
359 | ||
360 | Most operators that deal with positions or lengths in the string will | |
361 | automatically switch to using character positions, including C<chop()>, | |
362 | C<substr()>, C<pos()>, C<index()>, C<rindex()>, C<sprintf()>, | |
363 | C<write()>, and C<length()>. Operators that specifically don't switch | |
364 | include C<vec()>, C<pack()>, and C<unpack()>. Operators that really | |
365 | don't care include C<chomp()>, as well as any other operator that | |
366 | treats a string as a bucket of bits, such as C<sort()>, and the | |
367 | operators dealing with filenames. | |
368 | ||
369 | =item * | |
370 | ||
371 | The C<pack()>/C<unpack()> letters "C<c>" and "C<C>" do I<not> change, | |
372 | since they're often used for byte-oriented formats. (Again, think | |
373 | "C<char>" in the C language.) However, there is a new "C<U>" specifier | |
374 | that will convert between UTF-8 characters and integers. (It works | |
375 | outside of the utf8 pragma too.) | |
376 | ||
377 | =item * | |
378 | ||
379 | The C<chr()> and C<ord()> functions work on characters. This is like | |
380 | C<pack("U")> and C<unpack("U")>, not like C<pack("C")> and | |
381 | C<unpack("C")>. In fact, the latter are how you now emulate | |
382 | byte-oriented C<chr()> and C<ord()> under utf8. | |
383 | ||
384 | =item * | |
385 | ||
a1ca4561 YST |
386 | The bit string operators C<& | ^ ~> can operate on character data. |
387 | However, for backward compatibility reasons (bit string operations | |
388 | when the characters all are less than 256 in ordinal value) one cannot | |
389 | mix C<~> (the bit complement) and characters both less than 256 and | |
390 | equal or greater than 256. Most importantly, the DeMorgan's laws | |
391 | (C<~($x|$y) eq ~$x&~$y>, C<~($x&$y) eq ~$x|~$y>) won't hold. | |
392 | Another way to look at this is that the complement cannot return | |
393 | B<both> the 8-bit (byte) wide bit complement, and the full character | |
394 | wide bit complement. | |
395 | ||
396 | =item * | |
397 | ||
393fec97 GS |
398 | And finally, C<scalar reverse()> reverses by character rather than by byte. |
399 | ||
400 | =back | |
401 | ||
8cbd9a7a GS |
402 | =head2 Character encodings for input and output |
403 | ||
7221edc9 | 404 | See L<Encode>. |
8cbd9a7a | 405 | |
393fec97 GS |
406 | =head1 CAVEATS |
407 | ||
408 | As of yet, there is no method for automatically coercing input and | |
b3419ed8 PK |
409 | output to some encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC. This is planned |
410 | in the near future, however. | |
393fec97 | 411 | |
8cbd9a7a GS |
412 | Whether an arbitrary piece of data will be treated as "characters" or |
413 | "bytes" by internal operations cannot be divined at the current time. | |
393fec97 GS |
414 | |
415 | Use of locales with utf8 may lead to odd results. Currently there is | |
416 | some attempt to apply 8-bit locale info to characters in the range | |
417 | 0..255, but this is demonstrably incorrect for locales that use | |
418 | characters above that range (when mapped into Unicode). It will also | |
419 | tend to run slower. Avoidance of locales is strongly encouraged. | |
420 | ||
421 | =head1 SEE ALSO | |
422 | ||
32293815 | 423 | L<bytes>, L<utf8>, L<perlretut>, L<perlvar/"${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS}"> |
393fec97 GS |
424 | |
425 | =cut |