I prefer charnames over utf8.

Sure, the latter allows you to use characters from the extended character set directly in your source code, even in function or variable names.

However, when working in a mixed environment, or collaborating/sharing over different architectures, many editors (and viewers) have different display settings. Most of these don't understand the in-band signalling that is "use utf8", especially if web viewers or Perlmonks come into the mix.

Of course, if all is correctly configured,

use utf8;
my $str = "09 Handel_ Water Music Suite - Bouré.m4a";
[download]

is easier to read than

# use charnames if your Perl is older than 5.16
my $str = "09 Handel_ Water Music Suite - Bour\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER E 
+WITH ACUTE}.m4a";
[download]

Tis is also helpful for languages where your coworker or maintainer is unfamiliar with. For me,

• "मुक्ता" is more or less unreadable for me, because I don't know the letters,
• "मुक्ता" makes me at least a bit confident that no bits were mangled,
• but "\N{DEVANAGARI LETTER MA}\N{DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN U}\N{DEVANAGARI LETTER KA}\N{DEVANAGARI SIGN VIRAMA}\N{DEVANAGARI LETTER TA}\N{DEVANAGARI VOWEL SIGN AA}" gives me at least an idea what it is 😉

Of course, YMMV, as always.

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.