diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'pod')
| -rw-r--r-- | pod/perlunicode.pod | 17 |
1 files changed, 10 insertions, 7 deletions
diff --git a/pod/perlunicode.pod b/pod/perlunicode.pod index 5b8d5be06c..64a14ab65a 100644 --- a/pod/perlunicode.pod +++ b/pod/perlunicode.pod @@ -47,7 +47,8 @@ normally be used. However, as a compatibility measure, this pragma must be explicitly used to enable recognition of UTF-8 encoded literals and identifiers in the -source text. +source text on ASCII based machines or recognize UTF-EBCDIC encoded literals +and identifiers on EBCDIC based machines. =back @@ -55,7 +56,7 @@ source text. Beginning with version 5.6, Perl uses logically wide characters to represent strings internally. This internal representation of strings -uses the UTF-8 encoding. +uses either the UTF-8 or the UTF-EBCDIC encoding. In future, Perl-level operations can be expected to work with characters rather than bytes, in general. @@ -84,7 +85,7 @@ Regardless of the above, the C<bytes> pragma can always be used to force byte semantics in a particular lexical scope. See L<bytes>. The C<utf8> pragma is primarily a compatibility device that enables -recognition of UTF-8 in literals encountered by the parser. It may also +recognition of UTF-(8|EBCDIC) in literals encountered by the parser. It may also be used for enabling some of the more experimental Unicode support features. Note that this pragma is only required until a future version of Perl in which character semantics will become the default. This pragma may @@ -104,6 +105,8 @@ bytes change to operating on characters. For ASCII data this makes no difference, because UTF-8 stores ASCII in single bytes, but for any character greater than C<chr(127)>, the character may be stored in a sequence of two or more bytes, all of which have the high bit set. +For C1 controls or Latin 1 characters on an EBCDIC platform the character +may be stored in a UTF-EBCDIC multi byte sequence. But by and large, the user need not worry about this, because Perl hides it from the user. A character in Perl is logically just a number ranging from 0 to 2**32 or so. Larger characters encode to longer @@ -122,9 +125,9 @@ Strings and patterns may contain characters that have an ordinal value larger than 255. Presuming you use a Unicode editor to edit your program, such characters -will typically occur directly within the literal strings as UTF-8 +will typically occur directly within the literal strings as UTF-(8|EBCDIC) characters, but you can also specify a particular character with an -extension of the C<\x> notation. UTF-8 characters are specified by +extension of the C<\x> notation. UTF-X characters are specified by putting the hexadecimal code within curlies after the C<\x>. For instance, a Unicode smiley face is C<\x{263A}>. @@ -233,8 +236,8 @@ And finally, C<scalar reverse()> reverses by character rather than by byte. =head1 CAVEATS As of yet, there is no method for automatically coercing input and -output to some encoding other than UTF-8. This is planned in the near -future, however. +output to some encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-EBCDIC. This is planned +in the near future, however. Whether an arbitrary piece of data will be treated as "characters" or "bytes" by internal operations cannot be divined at the current time. |