Re: Decoding unicode entities with HTML::Parser

It turns out that your problem is not based on the version of the module but on how it was compiled.

The functionality appears to be there in the version with which you have a problem (HTML::Entites 1.27, HTML-Parser 3.35), but it's conditional on UNICODE_ENTITIES being defined when the module was compiled.

use HTML::Entities qw( _decode_entities );

print(HTML::Entities::UNICODE_SUPPORT(), "\n");

# Not really, but good enough and avoids warning.
binmode(STDOUT, ':encoding(UTF-8)');

my $x = "&#345;";
_decode_entities($x, {});
print("$x\n");
[download]

>this_perl script.pl
1
[some char]

>that_perl script.pl
0
&#345;
[download]

Up to HTML-Parser 3.38, perl Makefile.PL prompted whether UNICODE support was desired or not and would set UNICODE_ENTITIES accordingly.

In 3.40, UNICODE_ENTITIES was renamed to UNICODE_HTML_PARSER, and it's solely based on the Perl version. (It's defined for Perl 5.8+.)

There's really not much you can do if the user didn't compile the functionality you want. In this case, there's no way to add a hack, short of rewriting the entire function. You should add a dependency on HTML::Entities::UNICODE_SUPPORT returning true. When it's not, request that the user either recompile the module with UNICODE support or upgrade to at least HTML-Parser 3.40.

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Re^2: Decoding unicode entities with HTML::Parser by Sixtease (Friar) on Apr 09, 2008 at 11:41 UTC
Cool, cool! This is exactly what I needed to know. I rewrote the function with a regex (which is a bit slower) and fall back to it when HTML::Entities::UNICODE_SUPPORT is false. Thanks a lot for the insight. use strict; use warnings; print "Just Another Perl Hacker\n";	[reply]