The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess

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Re: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by Juerd (Abbot) on Sep 03, 2008 at 12:42 UTC
To stay on the topic of Perl (for now), rather than which community to ask for help: yes, it's immensely tragic that the difference between utf8 and utf-8 (note: case insensitive!) is so subtle visually, but so important semantically. It's tragic not because such a subtle distinction would be bad per se (after all, `+` versus `-` is the same amount of visual difference but we've been perfectly capable of coping with that), but because UTF-8 is an identifier used also outside the Perl world, where utf8 and utf-8 generally mean the same thing. But it's something we'll just have to get used to. One of the many historically defined quirks, that practically every language, whether programming or natural, has. It's documented and within this community fairly well known. Now if only indeed they'd just ask the Perl community for help, rather than that of Twitter... :). Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap', perl6_server => 'feather' }	[reply]
Re: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by moritz (Cardinal) on Sep 03, 2008 at 13:56 UTC
Why should a typo in an encoding name be handled differently from a typo in any other piece of data? If you send out a web page with a `charset=utf8` header, the W3 validator also complains about an usual (aka not known) encoding. It's unfortunate that an implementation detail (utf8) leaks to the user at all, though.	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by jzawodn (Initiate) on Sep 03, 2008 at 18:52 UTC
Typo? What typo? Why make the two look so similar when they have different implications?	[reply]
Re^3: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by moritz (Cardinal) on Sep 03, 2008 at 19:10 UTC
Because they are similar, in fact? Yes, I think it's unfortunate that this implementation detail leaks to the perl programmer, but I think it's normal that errors from the programmer lead to program errors. The encoding that the original blog poster meant to use is UTF-8. Period. I made the same error (in HTTP headers), and I'm not blaming the HTTP RFCs for not introducing an alias. (And no, the browser did not complain as noisily as perl did).	[reply]
Re^4: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess (DWIDNM) by tye (Sage) on Sep 04, 2008 at 01:04 UTC
Re: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by davorg (Chancellor) on Sep 03, 2008 at 13:23 UTC
There are a few good Perl people hanging around on Twitter. Jeremy Zawodny certainly got a reply from a reputable source :-) -- See the Copyright notice on my home node. "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club." -- Chip Salzenberg	[reply]
Re^2: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by jzawodn (Initiate) on Sep 03, 2008 at 18:50 UTC
With folks like Jessee and Justin Mason able to reply, I'd say that Twitter was a pretty useful tool in this case. Seems silly to pick on me for that.	[reply]
Re^3: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by derby (Abbot) on Sep 04, 2008 at 11:26 UTC
I really didn't mean to pick on you ... but the replies are only seen by you and those who also follow your repliers so the Perl community at large remains uniformed of the answers -- it's a rather selfish forum, don't you think? -derby	[reply]
Re^2: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by derby (Abbot) on Sep 03, 2008 at 14:24 UTC
Maybe it's me and my twitter-ignorance but when viewing the original twitter, I cannot see the replies. I'm guessing that in order to see the replies to the original twitter, I actually have to follow jzawodn. -derby	[reply]
Re^3: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by davorg (Chancellor) on Sep 03, 2008 at 16:54 UTC
No. You have to be following the people who are following jzawodn and chose to reply to him. Twitter really wasn't intended for conversations like this :-/ -- See the Copyright notice on my home node. "The first rule of Perl club is you do not talk about Perl club." -- Chip Salzenberg	[reply]
Re: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by ikegami (Patriarch) on Sep 03, 2008 at 19:01 UTC
It wouldn't croak if he removed the `,1`!	[reply] [d/l]
Re^2: The Perl UTF-8 and utf8 Encoding Mess by Anonymous Monk on Sep 04, 2008 at 06:46 UTC
Yes, this is weird, but its not that hard to find the error message, and relevant fix . http://perldoc.perl.org/perldiag.html#Malformed-UTF-8-character-(%25s) http://perldoc.perl.org/Encode.html#Handling-Malformed-Data http://perldoc.perl.org/Encode.html#UTF-8-vs.-utf8-vs.-UTF8	[reply]