One major problem is - as usual -that various perldocs were written by different authors each using another set of terminology.

• binary, byte, octet, etc for strings without flag
• character, text, etc for strings with flag
• sometimes other words like "stream" are used to abstract "string".
• the flag is named utf8-flag even if the internal format isn't 100% UTF8 and we still need to decode utf8 encoded strings.
• (update: mind also UTF-8 vs. utf8 vs. UTF8)

Furthermore is Perl - predominantly - operator dominated, contrary to type dominations in other languages.

We can use a bit operation on strings and so called the "utf8-flag" shouldn't matter at all, because the text-interpretation of the data is irrelevant.

Much of the confusion in this thread is due to terminology.

And when I read canonical sources like the following it's messy:

• perluniintro
• perlunitut
• perlunicode
• Encode
• utf8
• perlunifaq

Those perldocs are only the tip of the iceberg, because various other operator specific docs build on their terminology (or not)

I wonder if the authors would be able to talk to each other.

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