The Win32::Clipboard module only grabs the contents as ANSI Text, so any characters that cannot be represented in the current code page turn into '?'.

Using the more general GetAs method, the data is returned in the expected underlying Windows representation, but it is truncated at the first 0 byte! If it returned the contents properly as a buffer, I could then process it into a Perl-friendly format, but since it's not returning the data properly (up to the stated length complete with embedded nul's), it's kind of stuck.

Win32::Clipboard is written in XS so the module isn't easily updated. Is there any plans to extend it, or does anyone have a solution already?

Here is a simple program that illustrates the problem. Use the Keyboard Map utility to select chars, or copy something from a document, that uses characters not in the ANSI code page. Then run this to see what Perl thinks is on the clipboard.

${^WIDE_SYSTEM_CALLS}=1;
use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use Win32::Clipboard;

sub dumpstring
 {
 my ($caption, $x)= @_;
 my ($outstring, $out);
 open $out, ">", \$outstring  or die;
 print "$caption: ($x) ";
 while ($x =~ /./g) {
    printf {$out} "%x ", ord($&);
    }
 return $outstring;
 }
 

my $CLIP = Win32::Clipboard();
my $x= $CLIP->Get();
print dumpstring ("ANSI contents", $x), "\n";
my @formats= $CLIP->EnumFormats();
print "Formats: @formats\n";
$x= $CLIP->GetAs (13);
print dumpstring ("GetAs Unicode contents", $x), "\n";

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—John

In reply to Win32::Clipboard and Unicode by John M. Dlugosz

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