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in reply to Re^3: Chicanery Needed to Handle Unicode Text on Microsoft Windows
in thread Chicanery Needed to Handle Unicode Text on Microsoft Windows

For older versions of Perl (<= 5.8.8), you'd need an additional :utf8 layer at the end, i.e. :raw:perlio:encoding(UTF-16LE):crlf:utf8 (although this isn't needed with newer versions, it doesn't do any harm either)

So do the cognoscenti of the Perl community agree then? The canonical workaround to the Perl UTF-16-on-Windows defect is to use the following sequence of layers in the three-argument form of open for both input (<) and output (>).

:raw:perlio:encoding(UTF-16LE):crlf:utf8

Thus.

open my $input_fh, '<:raw:perlio:encoding(UTF-16LE):crlf:utf8', $input_file or die "Can't open input file $input_file: $OS_ERROR\n"; open my $output_fh, '>:raw:perlio:encoding(UTF-16LE):crlf:utf8', $output_file or die "Can't open output file $output_file: $OS_ERROR\n";
I think this only goes to prove your point that this is way too arcane for mere mortals... And, even though there is a "solution" to the issue, the current behavior of the :crlf layer is definitely a bug, IMHO. For one, it violates the principle of least surprise. Instead, the following straightforward approach (as anyone sane in his mind would glean from the existing documentation) should work: open my $fh, '<:encoding(UTF-16LE)', ...

Thank you! That's all I'm saying.

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Re^5: Chicanery Needed to Handle Unicode Text on Microsoft Windows
by Anonymous Monk on Oct 31, 2010 at 18:12 UTC
    Nope, you're wrong Jim, it badly broken, to call it arcane is flattery