in reply to
Re^2: Jargon relating to Perl strings
in thread Jargon relating to Perl strings
Right, we do mean something different with "the UTF-8 doesn't matter". I interpret that as the only difference between the internal representation of the strings is whether the UTF-8 flag is set or not -- but you use it to mean "it doesn't matter whether the internal encoding is UTF-8 or not".
use Devel::Peek;
my $x = my $y = "\xC9ric";
utf8::upgrade($x);
utf8::upgrade($y); utf8::encode($y);
Dump($x);
Dump($y);
# Now $x and $y differ only in the setting of the UTF-8 flag
say substr($x, 0, 1) eq substr($y, 0, 1) ? "equal" : "different";
__END__
SV = PV(0x8cd80cc) at 0x8cea9ec
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (PADMY,POK,pPOK,UTF8)
PV = 0x8cef6e8 "\303\211ric"\0 [UTF8 "\x{c9}ric"]
CUR = 5
LEN = 9
SV = PV(0x8cd803c) at 0x8ceaa28
REFCNT = 1
FLAGS = (PADMY,POK,pPOK)
PV = 0x8cf38b8 "\303\211ric"\0
CUR = 5
LEN = 9
different
