jmClifford has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi. I have the following code (and output); 

print sprintf ("%-6s", "°C").   "|\n";
print sprintf ("%-6s", "Deg C")."|\n";
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Output;
°C   |
Deg C |

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It appears the 2 bytes involved with the ° character is comprehended as 2 spaces and so my vertical bars do not align. Is there a way around this issue (without just avoiding such characters) ??

Regards JC......

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Issue of formatting columns of data
by choroba (Cardinal) on Sep 25, 2024 at 15:49 UTC
    You need to
    1. Save the source file as UTF-8.
    2. Tell Perl that it is UTF-8.
    3. Tell Perl to encode the output as UTF-8. 
    #! /usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use utf8;
use open IO => ':encoding(UTF-8)', ':std';

print sprintf ("%-6s", "°C").   "|\n";
print sprintf ("%-6s", "Deg C")."|\n";

    [download]
    Output (in a UTF-8 terminal): 
    °C    |
Deg C |

    map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]
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      Any of these would work:

      • binmode STDOUT, "encoding(UTF-8)"
      • binmode STDOUT, ":utf8"
      • use open qw(:std :utf8);
      • perl -C your_script
[reply]
        • *please* do NOT promote binmode ..., ":utf8";, as that is unsafe
        • The :encoding(utf-8)" is missing a :
        • perl -C is for output only (I'd use -COE for clarity), not for the source code. UTF-8 in source code requires perl -COE -Mutf8 -wE'say "°C"'

        Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn
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