℞ 5: Unicode literals by character number In an interpolated literal, whether a double-quoted string or a regex, you may specify a character by its number using the \x{HHHHHH} escape. String: "\x{3a3}" Regex: /\x{3a3}/ String: "\x{1d45b}" Regex: /\x{1d45b}/ # even…
℞ 4: Characters and their numbers Do you need to translate a codepoint to a character or a character to its codepoint? The ord and chr functions work transparently on all codepoints, not just on ASCII alone—nor in fact, not…
℞ 3: Declare source in UTF-8 for identifiers and literals Without the all-critical use utf8 declaration, putting UTF‑8 in your literals and identifiers won’t work right. If you used the standard Perl Unicode preamble, this already happened. If you did,…
℞ 2: Fine-tuning Unicode warnings It’s easy to get Unicode wrong, especially when handling user input and dealing with multiple encodings. Perl is happy to help you detect unexpected conditions of your data. Perl is also happy to let you…
To handle Unicode effectively, always decompose on the way in, then recompose on the way out.
Tom Christiansen demonstrates the bare minimum feature set necessary to work with Unicode effectively in Perl 5.
In this excerpt from Programming Perl 4e, Tom Christiansen demonstrates that, in a Unicode world, sorting correctly can be trickier than you think.
Author’s note: Autrijus Tang is a speaker at this October’s European Open Source Convention. In the fine tradition of the OSCON, he is a Perl hacker, entrepreneur, internationalization geek, and self-proclaimed “Net activist, artist, and anarchist.” AT EuroOSCON, Tang…
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