http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=989379


in reply to how to output file in Unicode

Unicode is not a file format.

Unicode is rather abstract concept: a collection of characters, and a mapping from the characters to numbers.

But to write a file, there is one step missing: a character encoding, that transforms those numbers into bytes. Popular ones are UTF-8, and UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE and UTF-32.

Some programs on windows write "Unicode" when they mean one of the UTF-16 encodings, but it's still wrong.

So, what encoding do you want?

Also please read Encodings and Unicode.

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Re^2: how to output file in Unicode
by anakin30 (Acolyte) on Aug 23, 2012 at 20:58 UTC

    My apology,i've missed out a step over here. I want to output file into Unicode (UTF-8). thanks for your reply

      hello anakin30

      How do you get the string you are going to print ?
      From file? from database? or it is the result of some module?

      And do you know the encoding of the string?

        Hi remiah

        I run a Perl script to extract user attribute values from LDAP.

        Extracted output file contains First Name and Last Name of German users.

        Supposed Last Name should be displayed as "Björn", but it is displayed as "Björn", which seems to be unrecognizable.

        I learned that the output file was created in ASCII format should be created in Unicode UTF-8 format in order the German character to be visible.

        thanks