.\" -*- mode: troff; coding: utf-8 -*- .\" Automatically generated by Pod::Man 5.01 (Pod::Simple 3.43) .\" .\" Standard preamble: .\" ======================================================================== .de Sp \" Vertical space (when we can't use .PP) .if t .sp .5v .if n .sp .. .de Vb \" Begin verbatim text .ft CW .nf .ne \\$1 .. .de Ve \" End verbatim text .ft R .fi .. .\" \*(C` and \*(C' are quotes in nroff, nothing in troff, for use with C<>. .ie n \{\ . ds C` "" . ds C' "" 'br\} .el\{\ . ds C` . ds C' 'br\} .\" .\" Escape single quotes in literal strings from groff's Unicode transform. .ie \n(.g .ds Aq \(aq .el .ds Aq ' .\" .\" If the F register is >0, we'll generate index entries on stderr for .\" titles (.TH), headers (.SH), subsections (.SS), items (.Ip), and index .\" entries marked with X<> in POD. Of course, you'll have to process the .\" output yourself in some meaningful fashion. .\" .\" Avoid warning from groff about undefined register 'F'. .de IX .. .nr rF 0 .if \n(.g .if rF .nr rF 1 .if (\n(rF:(\n(.g==0)) \{\ . if \nF \{\ . de IX . tm Index:\\$1\t\\n%\t"\\$2" .. . if !\nF==2 \{\ . nr % 0 . nr F 2 . \} . \} .\} .rr rF .\" ======================================================================== .\" .IX Title "encoding::warnings 3perl" .TH encoding::warnings 3perl 2024-01-12 "perl v5.38.2" "Perl Programmers Reference Guide" .\" For nroff, turn off justification. Always turn off hyphenation; it makes .\" way too many mistakes in technical documents. .if n .ad l .nh .SH NAME encoding::warnings \- Warn on implicit encoding conversions .SH VERSION .IX Header "VERSION" This document describes version 0.13 of encoding::warnings, released June 20, 2016. .SH NOTICE .IX Header "NOTICE" As of Perl 5.26.0, this module has no effect. The internal Perl feature that was used to implement this module has been removed. In recent years, much work has been done on the Perl core to eliminate discrepancies in the treatment of upgraded versus downgraded strings. In addition, the encoding pragma, which caused many of the problems, is no longer supported. Thus, the warnings this module produced are no longer necessary. .PP Hence, if you load this module on Perl 5.26.0, you will get one warning that the module is no longer supported; and the module will do nothing thereafter. .SH SYNOPSIS .IX Header "SYNOPSIS" .Vb 1 \& use encoding::warnings; # or \*(AqFATAL\*(Aq to raise fatal exceptions \& \& utf8::encode($a = chr(20000)); # a byte\-string (raw bytes) \& $b = chr(20000); # a unicode\-string (wide characters) \& \& # "Bytes implicitly upgraded into wide characters as iso\-8859\-1" \& $c = $a . $b; .Ve .SH DESCRIPTION .IX Header "DESCRIPTION" .SS "Overview of the problem" .IX Subsection "Overview of the problem" By default, there is a fundamental asymmetry in Perl's unicode model: implicit upgrading from byte-strings to unicode-strings assumes that they were encoded in \fIISO 8859\-1 (Latin\-1)\fR, but unicode-strings are downgraded with UTF\-8 encoding. This happens because the first 256 codepoints in Unicode happens to agree with Latin\-1. .PP However, this silent upgrading can easily cause problems, if you happen to mix unicode strings with non\-Latin1 data \-\- i.e. byte-strings encoded in UTF\-8 or other encodings. The error will not manifest until the combined string is written to output, at which time it would be impossible to see where did the silent upgrading occur. .SS "Detecting the problem" .IX Subsection "Detecting the problem" This module simplifies the process of diagnosing such problems. Just put this line on top of your main program: .PP .Vb 1 \& use encoding::warnings; .Ve .PP Afterwards, implicit upgrading of high-bit bytes will raise a warning. Ex.: \f(CW\*(C`Bytes implicitly upgraded into wide characters as iso\-8859\-1 at \&\- line 7\*(C'\fR. .PP However, strings composed purely of ASCII code points (\f(CW0x00\fR..\f(CW0x7F\fR) will \fInot\fR trigger this warning. .PP You can also make the warnings fatal by importing this module as: .PP .Vb 1 \& use encoding::warnings \*(AqFATAL\*(Aq; .Ve .SS "Solving the problem" .IX Subsection "Solving the problem" Most of the time, this warning occurs when a byte-string is concatenated with a unicode-string. There are a number of ways to solve it: .IP \(bu 4 Upgrade both sides to unicode-strings .Sp If your program does not need compatibility for Perl 5.6 and earlier, the recommended approach is to apply appropriate IO disciplines, so all data in your program become unicode-strings. See encoding, open and "binmode" in perlfunc for how. .IP \(bu 4 Downgrade both sides to byte-strings .Sp The other way works too, especially if you are sure that all your data are under the same encoding, or if compatibility with older versions of Perl is desired. .Sp You may downgrade strings with \f(CW\*(C`Encode::encode\*(C'\fR and \f(CW\*(C`utf8::encode\*(C'\fR. See Encode and utf8 for details. .IP \(bu 4 Specify the encoding for implicit byte-string upgrading .Sp If you are confident that all byte-strings will be in a specific encoding like UTF\-8, \fIand\fR need not support older versions of Perl, use the \f(CW\*(C`encoding\*(C'\fR pragma: .Sp .Vb 1 \& use encoding \*(Aqutf8\*(Aq; .Ve .Sp Similarly, this will silence warnings from this module, and preserve the default behaviour: .Sp .Vb 1 \& use encoding \*(Aqiso\-8859\-1\*(Aq; .Ve .Sp However, note that \f(CW\*(C`use encoding\*(C'\fR actually had three distinct effects: .RS 4 .IP \(bu 4 PerlIO layers for \fBSTDIN\fR and \fBSTDOUT\fR .Sp This is similar to what open pragma does. .IP \(bu 4 Literal conversions .Sp This turns \fIall\fR literal string in your program into unicode-strings (equivalent to a \f(CW\*(C`use utf8\*(C'\fR), by decoding them using the specified encoding. .IP \(bu 4 Implicit upgrading for byte-strings .Sp This will silence warnings from this module, as shown above. .RE .RS 4 .Sp Because literal conversions also work on empty strings, it may surprise some people: .Sp .Vb 1 \& use encoding \*(Aqbig5\*(Aq; \& \& my $byte_string = pack("C*", 0xA4, 0x40); \& print length $a; # 2 here. \& $a .= ""; # concatenating with a unicode string... \& print length $a; # 1 here! .Ve .Sp In other words, do not \f(CW\*(C`use encoding\*(C'\fR unless you are certain that the program will not deal with any raw, 8\-bit binary data at all. .Sp However, the \f(CW\*(C`Filter => 1\*(C'\fR flavor of \f(CW\*(C`use encoding\*(C'\fR will \fInot\fR affect implicit upgrading for byte-strings, and is thus incapable of silencing warnings from this module. See encoding for more details. .RE .SH CAVEATS .IX Header "CAVEATS" For Perl 5.9.4 or later, this module's effect is lexical. .PP For Perl versions prior to 5.9.4, this module affects the whole script, instead of inside its lexical block. .SH "SEE ALSO" .IX Header "SEE ALSO" perlunicode, perluniintro .PP open, utf8, encoding, Encode .SH AUTHORS .IX Header "AUTHORS" Audrey Tang .SH COPYRIGHT .IX Header "COPYRIGHT" Copyright 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 by Audrey Tang . .PP This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. .PP See