Hi All!

I hit something weird I'd like to discuss with you. The behaviour below is there up until perl 5.20.2 at least, I didn't try it in anything more recent. 

use strict;
use warnings;
use Encode qw< encode >;
my $chars = "whatever";
print length($chars),
   " characters - initial string\n";

encode('UTF-8', $chars);
print length($chars),
   " characters - first encode, no FB_CROAK\n";

encode('UTF-8', "$chars", Encode::FB_CROAK);
print length($chars),
   " characters - second encode, FB_CROAK on, readonly string\n";

encode('UTF-8', $chars, Encode::FB_CROAK);
print length($chars),
   " characters - third encode, FB_CROAK, on original string\n";

[download]
I would have expected that all the prints above would just say that the string $chars is 8 characters long... but perl thinks differently: 
8 characters - initial string
8 characters - first encode, no FB_CROAK
8 characters - second encode, FB_CROAK on, readonly string
0 characters - third encode, FB_CROAK, on original string

[download]
So, it seems that if FB_CROAK is on and the string to encode is not readonly... it gets destroyed.

I tried with perl 5.8.8, 5.18.1 and 5.20.2, with the same results. I tried to look in the docs for Encode but to no avail. Tried to Google, but nothing. Tried to supersearch here... nothing.

Am I missing anything? Is this what's expected actually, and documented anywhere? Thanks!

perl -ple'$_=reverse' <<<ti.xittelop@oivalf

Io ho capito... ma tu che hai detto?

In reply to Encode::FB_CROAK eating up strings? by polettix

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • 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! —
  • 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:
    & &amp;
    < &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.