/ 
utf8-all-0.017
River stage two • 31 direct dependents • 51 total dependents
/ utf8::all

NAME

utf8::all - turn on Unicode - all of it

VERSION

version 0.017

SYNOPSIS

use utf8::all;                      # Turn on UTF-8, all of it.

open my $in, '<', 'contains-utf8';  # UTF-8 already turned on here
print length 'føø bār';             # 7 UTF-8 characters
my $utf8_arg = shift @ARGV;         # @ARGV is UTF-8 too (only for main)

DESCRIPTION

The use utf8 pragma tells the Perl parser to allow UTF-8 in the program text in the current lexical scope. This also means that you can now use literal Unicode characters as part of strings, variable names, and regular expressions.

utf8::all goes further:

  • charnames are imported so \N{...} sequences can be used to compile Unicode characters based on names.

  • On Perl v5.11.0 or higher, the use feature 'unicode_strings' is enabled.

  • use feature fc and use feature unicode_eval are enabled on Perl 5.16.0 and higher.

  • Filehandles are opened with UTF-8 encoding turned on by default (including STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR). Meaning that they automatically convert UTF-8 octets to characters and vice versa. If you don't want UTF-8 for a particular filehandle, you'll have to set binmode $filehandle.

  • @ARGV gets converted from UTF-8 octets to Unicode characters (when utf8::all is used from the main package). This is similar to the behaviour of the -CA perl command-line switch (see perlrun).

  • readdir, readlink, readpipe (including the qx// and backtick operators), and glob (including the <> operator) now all work with and return Unicode characters instead of (UTF-8) octets.

Lexical scope

The pragma is lexically-scoped, so you can do the following if you had some reason to:

{
    use utf8::all;
    open my $out, '>', 'outfile';
    my $utf8_str = 'føø bār';
    print length $utf8_str, "\n"; # 7
    print $out $utf8_str;         # out as utf8
}
open my $in, '<', 'outfile';      # in as raw
my $text = do { local $/; <$in>};
print length $text, "\n";         # 10, not 7!

Instead of lexical scoping, you can also use no utf8::all to turn off the effects.

Note that the effect on @ARGV and the STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR file handles is always global!

SEE ALSO

INTERACTION WITH AUTODIE

If you use autodie, which is a great idea, you need to use at least version 2.12, released on June 26, 2012. Otherwise, autodie obliterates the IO layers set by the open pragma. See RT #54777 and GH #7.

AVAILABILITY

The project homepage is http://metacpan.org/release/utf8-all/.

The latest version of this module is available from the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). Visit http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ to find a CPAN site near you, or see https://metacpan.org/module/utf8::all/.

SOURCE

The development version is on github at http://github.com/doherty/utf8-all and may be cloned from git://github.com/doherty/utf8-all.git

BUGS AND LIMITATIONS

You can make new bug reports, and view existing ones, through the web interface at https://github.com/doherty/utf8-all/issues.

COMPATIBILITY

The filesystems of Dos, Windows, and OS/2 do not (fully) support UTF-8. The readlink and readdir functions and glob operators will therefore not be replaced on these systems.

AUTHORS

  • Michael Schwern <mschwern@cpan.org>

  • Mike Doherty <doherty@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2009 by Michael Schwern <mschwern@cpan.org>.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.