Perl is an incredible language, my exclusive language for 15 years now, but when it comes to the global language requirements that most web programming ultimately requires perhaps Perl is presently just not suited to that task.

None of those tasks are Perl-specific.

and each needs to be checked, decoded, encoded, numerous times.

None need to be "checked". If you don't want to use NULLs, don't use NULLs. If you want to use NULLs, don't complain that you're using NULLs.

As for your claim that each needs to be decoded and encoded multiple times, it's non-sense. Everything needs to be decoded and encoded exactly once, and that can usually be done automatically.

Which leads me to ask: Is there a programming language that easily handles Unicode either automatically

Unicode is not an encoding.

Your problem has to do with dealing the encodings of various data sources. You have to do that no matter what language unless it places limits on your data sources and on your outputs.

In reply to Re^6: Mugged by UTF8, this CANNOT be right by ikegami
in thread Mugged by UTF8, this CANNOT be right by tosh

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