Need advice on HTML entities

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

I've got into a tangle using HTML::Entities v 1.27

Using WinXP, Activestate 5.8.6 build 811

Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use HTML::Entities;

my $string = "&rsquo;";
print "string: $string\n"; # &rsquo 

decode_entities($string);
print "de entitied: $string\n"; # ’
print "ord of string:" . ord($string) . "\n"; # 226

encode_entities($string);
print "re entitied: $string\n"; # &acirc;&#128;&#153

my $character = encode_entities(chr(226));
print "character 226: $character\n"; # &acirc

$character = encode_entities(chr(8217));
print "character 8217: $character\n"; # &rsquo
[download]

I think I need decode_entities to return char(8217) and not char(226)

Thanks in advance

Comment on Need advice on HTML entities Select or Download Code

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Re: Need advice on HTML entities by Tanktalus (Canon) on Feb 07, 2005 at 17:24 UTC
Works better here ... although I'm getting a message of "Wide character in print at z line 10." Because perl is converting this to UTF8 successfully, the ord is coming out as 8217. The 226 you're getting is simply the first character in a multi-byte character because your perl is treating the multibyte character as a series of single byte characters. You may try something like this: `C:\> set LANG=en_US.UTF-8 C:\> perl html_entities_test.pl` [download] I'm not sure how well it'll work for you, though.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: Need advice on HTML entities by wfsp (Abbot) on Feb 07, 2005 at 17:31 UTC
Tanktalus Yes, that did it! Many thanks.	[reply]
Re: Need advice on HTML entities by borisz (Canon) on Feb 07, 2005 at 17:39 UTC
You could use `HTML::Entities::decode_entities_old($string)` [download] thats the old perl fallback. Or make your string utf8 before you pass it to `decode_entities`. `my $string = "’"; chop ( $string .= chr(0x1234)); print "string: $string\n"; # &rsquo decode_entities($string);` [download] and since we like to print a utf8 char put STDOUT into utf8 mode too. `# at the top of the program binmode STDOUT, ":utf8";` [download] UPDATE: or even better update HTML::Parser and it works out of the box. Tested with 3.43. Boris	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: Need advice on HTML entities by wfsp (Abbot) on Feb 08, 2005 at 20:12 UTC
...update HTML::Parser... That did it! Many thanks, John	[reply]