1Encode(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Encode(3)
2
6 Encode - character encodings in Perl
7
9 use Encode qw(decode encode);
10 $characters = decode('UTF-8', $octets, Encode::FB_CROAK);
11 $octets = encode('UTF-8', $characters, Encode::FB_CROAK);
12 Table of Contents
14 Encode consists of a collection of modules whose details are too
15 extensive to fit in one document. This one itself explains the top-
16 level APIs and general topics at a glance. For other topics and more
17 details, see the documentation for these modules:
18 Encode::Alias - Alias definitions to encodings
20 Encode::Encoding - Encode Implementation Base Class
21 Encode::Supported - List of Supported Encodings
22 Encode::CN - Simplified Chinese Encodings
23 Encode::JP - Japanese Encodings
24 Encode::KR - Korean Encodings
25 Encode::TW - Traditional Chinese Encodings
26
28 The "Encode" module provides the interface between Perl strings and the
29 rest of the system. Perl strings are sequences of characters.
30 The repertoire of characters that Perl can represent is a superset of
32 those defined by the Unicode Consortium. On most platforms the ordinal
33 values of a character as returned by "ord(S)" is the Unicode codepoint
34 for that character. The exceptions are platforms where the legacy
35 encoding is some variant of EBCDIC rather than a superset of ASCII; see
36 perlebcdic.
37 During recent history, data is moved around a computer in 8-bit chunks,
39 often called "bytes" but also known as "octets" in standards documents.
40 Perl is widely used to manipulate data of many types: not only strings
41 of characters representing human or computer languages, but also
42 "binary" data, being the machine's representation of numbers, pixels in
43 an image, or just about anything.
44 When Perl is processing "binary data", the programmer wants Perl to
46 process "sequences of bytes". This is not a problem for Perl: because a
47 byte has 256 possible values, it easily fits in Perl's much larger
48 "logical character".
49 This document mostly explains the how. perlunitut and perlunifaq
51 explain the why.
52 TERMINOLOGY
54 character
55 A character in the range 0 .. 2**32-1 (or more); what Perl's strings
57 are made of.
58 byte
60 A character in the range 0..255; a special case of a Perl character.
62 octet
64 8 bits of data, with ordinal values 0..255; term for bytes passed to or
66 from a non-Perl context, such as a disk file, standard I/O stream,
67 database, command-line argument, environment variable, socket etc.
68
70 Basic methods
71 encode
72 $octets = encode(ENCODING, STRING[, CHECK])
74 Encodes the scalar value STRING from Perl's internal form into ENCODING
76 and returns a sequence of octets. ENCODING can be either a canonical
77 name or an alias. For encoding names and aliases, see "Defining
78 Aliases". For CHECK, see "Handling Malformed Data".
79 CAVEAT: the input scalar STRING might be modified in-place depending on
81 what is set in CHECK. See "LEAVE_SRC" if you want your inputs to be
82 left unchanged.
83 For example, to convert a string from Perl's internal format into
85 ISO-8859-1, also known as Latin1:
86 $octets = encode("iso-8859-1", $string);
88 CAVEAT: When you run "$octets = encode("UTF-8", $string)", then $octets
90 might not be equal to $string. Though both contain the same data, the
91 UTF8 flag for $octets is always off. When you encode anything, the
92 UTF8 flag on the result is always off, even when it contains a
93 completely valid UTF-8 string. See "The UTF8 flag" below.
94 If the $string is "undef", then "undef" is returned.
96 "str2bytes" may be used as an alias for "encode".
98 decode
100 $string = decode(ENCODING, OCTETS[, CHECK])
102 This function returns the string that results from decoding the scalar
104 value OCTETS, assumed to be a sequence of octets in ENCODING, into
105 Perl's internal form. As with encode(), ENCODING can be either a
106 canonical name or an alias. For encoding names and aliases, see
107 "Defining Aliases"; for CHECK, see "Handling Malformed Data".
108 CAVEAT: the input scalar OCTETS might be modified in-place depending on
110 what is set in CHECK. See "LEAVE_SRC" if you want your inputs to be
111 left unchanged.
112 For example, to convert ISO-8859-1 data into a string in Perl's
114 internal format:
115 $string = decode("iso-8859-1", $octets);
117 CAVEAT: When you run "$string = decode("UTF-8", $octets)", then $string
119 might not be equal to $octets. Though both contain the same data, the
120 UTF8 flag for $string is on. See "The UTF8 flag" below.
121 If the $string is "undef", then "undef" is returned.
123 "bytes2str" may be used as an alias for "decode".
125 find_encoding
127 [$obj =] find_encoding(ENCODING)
129 Returns the encoding object corresponding to ENCODING. Returns "undef"
131 if no matching ENCODING is find. The returned object is what does the
132 actual encoding or decoding.
133 $string = decode($name, $bytes);
135 is in fact
137 $string = do {
139 $obj = find_encoding($name);
140 croak qq(encoding "$name" not found) unless ref $obj;
141 $obj->decode($bytes);
142 };
143 with more error checking.
145 You can therefore save time by reusing this object as follows;
147 my $enc = find_encoding("iso-8859-1");
149 while(<>) {
150 my $string = $enc->decode($_);
151 ... # now do something with $string;
152 }
153 Besides "decode" and "encode", other methods are available as well.
155 For instance, "name()" returns the canonical name of the encoding
156 object.
157 find_encoding("latin1")->name; # iso-8859-1
159 See Encode::Encoding for details.
161 find_mime_encoding
163 [$obj =] find_mime_encoding(MIME_ENCODING)
165 Returns the encoding object corresponding to MIME_ENCODING. Acts same
167 as "find_encoding()" but "mime_name()" of returned object must match to
168 MIME_ENCODING. So as opposite of "find_encoding()" canonical names and
169 aliases are not used when searching for object.
170 find_mime_encoding("utf8"); # returns undef because "utf8" is not valid I<MIME_ENCODING>
172 find_mime_encoding("utf-8"); # returns encode object "utf-8-strict"
173 find_mime_encoding("UTF-8"); # same as "utf-8" because I<MIME_ENCODING> is case insensitive
174 find_mime_encoding("utf-8-strict"); returns undef because "utf-8-strict" is not valid I<MIME_ENCODING>
175 from_to
177 [$length =] from_to($octets, FROM_ENC, TO_ENC [, CHECK])
179 Converts in-place data between two encodings. The data in $octets must
181 be encoded as octets and not as characters in Perl's internal format.
182 For example, to convert ISO-8859-1 data into Microsoft's CP1250
183 encoding:
184 from_to($octets, "iso-8859-1", "cp1250");
186 and to convert it back:
188 from_to($octets, "cp1250", "iso-8859-1");
190 Because the conversion happens in place, the data to be converted
192 cannot be a string constant: it must be a scalar variable.
193 "from_to()" returns the length of the converted string in octets on
195 success, and "undef" on error.
196 CAVEAT: The following operations may look the same, but are not:
198 from_to($data, "iso-8859-1", "UTF-8"); #1
200 $data = decode("iso-8859-1", $data); #2
201 Both #1 and #2 make $data consist of a completely valid UTF-8 string,
203 but only #2 turns the UTF8 flag on. #1 is equivalent to:
204 $data = encode("UTF-8", decode("iso-8859-1", $data));
206 See "The UTF8 flag" below.
208 Also note that:
210 from_to($octets, $from, $to, $check);
212 is equivalent to:
214 $octets = encode($to, decode($from, $octets), $check);
216 Yes, it does not respect the $check during decoding. It is
218 deliberately done that way. If you need minute control, use "decode"
219 followed by "encode" as follows:
220 $octets = encode($to, decode($from, $octets, $check_from), $check_to);
222 encode_utf8
224 $octets = encode_utf8($string);
226 Equivalent to "$octets = encode("utf8", $string)". The characters in
228 $string are encoded in Perl's internal format, and the result is
229 returned as a sequence of octets. Because all possible characters in
230 Perl have a (loose, not strict) utf8 representation, this function
231 cannot fail.
232 WARNING: do not use this function for data exchange as it can produce
234 not strict utf8 $octets! For strictly valid UTF-8 output use "$octets =
235 encode("UTF-8", $string)".
236 decode_utf8
238 $string = decode_utf8($octets [, CHECK]);
240 Equivalent to "$string = decode("utf8", $octets [, CHECK])". The
242 sequence of octets represented by $octets is decoded from (loose, not
243 strict) utf8 into a sequence of logical characters. Because not all
244 sequences of octets are valid not strict utf8, it is quite possible for
245 this function to fail. For CHECK, see "Handling Malformed Data".
246 WARNING: do not use this function for data exchange as it can produce
248 $string with not strict utf8 representation! For strictly valid UTF-8
249 $string representation use "$string = decode("UTF-8", $octets [,
250 CHECK])".
251 CAVEAT: the input $octets might be modified in-place depending on what
253 is set in CHECK. See "LEAVE_SRC" if you want your inputs to be left
254 unchanged.
255 Listing available encodings
257 use Encode;
258 @list = Encode->encodings();
259 Returns a list of canonical names of available encodings that have
261 already been loaded. To get a list of all available encodings
262 including those that have not yet been loaded, say:
263 @all_encodings = Encode->encodings(":all");
265 Or you can give the name of a specific module:
267 @with_jp = Encode->encodings("Encode::JP");
269 When ""::"" is not in the name, ""Encode::"" is assumed.
271 @ebcdic = Encode->encodings("EBCDIC");
273 To find out in detail which encodings are supported by this package,
275 see Encode::Supported.
276 Defining Aliases
278 To add a new alias to a given encoding, use:
279 use Encode;
281 use Encode::Alias;
282 define_alias(NEWNAME => ENCODING);
283 After that, NEWNAME can be used as an alias for ENCODING. ENCODING may
285 be either the name of an encoding or an encoding object.
286 Before you do that, first make sure the alias is nonexistent using
288 "resolve_alias()", which returns the canonical name thereof. For
289 example:
290 Encode::resolve_alias("latin1") eq "iso-8859-1" # true
292 Encode::resolve_alias("iso-8859-12") # false; nonexistent
293 Encode::resolve_alias($name) eq $name # true if $name is canonical
294 "resolve_alias()" does not need "use Encode::Alias"; it can be imported
296 via "use Encode qw(resolve_alias)".
297 See Encode::Alias for details.
299 Finding IANA Character Set Registry names
301 The canonical name of a given encoding does not necessarily agree with
302 IANA Character Set Registry, commonly seen as "Content-Type:
303 text/plain; charset=WHATEVER". For most cases, the canonical name
304 works, but sometimes it does not, most notably with "utf-8-strict".
305 As of "Encode" version 2.21, a new method "mime_name()" is therefore
307 added.
308 use Encode;
310 my $enc = find_encoding("UTF-8");
311 warn $enc->name; # utf-8-strict
312 warn $enc->mime_name; # UTF-8
313 See also: Encode::Encoding
315
317 If your perl supports "PerlIO" (which is the default), you can use a
318 "PerlIO" layer to decode and encode directly via a filehandle. The
319 following two examples are fully identical in functionality:
320 ### Version 1 via PerlIO
322 open(INPUT, "< :encoding(shiftjis)", $infile)
323 || die "Can't open < $infile for reading: $!";
324 open(OUTPUT, "> :encoding(euc-jp)", $outfile)
325 || die "Can't open > $output for writing: $!";
326 while (<INPUT>) { # auto decodes $_
327 print OUTPUT; # auto encodes $_
328 }
329 close(INPUT) || die "can't close $infile: $!";
330 close(OUTPUT) || die "can't close $outfile: $!";
331 ### Version 2 via from_to()
333 open(INPUT, "< :raw", $infile)
334 || die "Can't open < $infile for reading: $!";
335 open(OUTPUT, "> :raw", $outfile)
336 || die "Can't open > $output for writing: $!";
337 while (<INPUT>) {
339 from_to($_, "shiftjis", "euc-jp", 1); # switch encoding
340 print OUTPUT; # emit raw (but properly encoded) data
341 }
342 close(INPUT) || die "can't close $infile: $!";
343 close(OUTPUT) || die "can't close $outfile: $!";
344 In the first version above, you let the appropriate encoding layer
346 handle the conversion. In the second, you explicitly translate from
347 one encoding to the other.
348 Unfortunately, it may be that encodings are not "PerlIO"-savvy. You
350 can check to see whether your encoding is supported by "PerlIO" by
351 invoking the "perlio_ok" method on it:
352 Encode::perlio_ok("hz"); # false
354 find_encoding("euc-cn")->perlio_ok; # true wherever PerlIO is available
355 use Encode qw(perlio_ok); # imported upon request
357 perlio_ok("euc-jp")
358 Fortunately, all encodings that come with "Encode" core are
360 "PerlIO"-savvy except for "hz" and "ISO-2022-kr". For the gory
361 details, see Encode::Encoding and Encode::PerlIO.
362
364 The optional CHECK argument tells "Encode" what to do when encountering
365 malformed data. Without CHECK, "Encode::FB_DEFAULT" (== 0) is assumed.
366 As of version 2.12, "Encode" supports coderef values for "CHECK"; see
368 below.
369 NOTE: Not all encodings support this feature. Some encodings ignore
371 the CHECK argument. For example, Encode::Unicode ignores CHECK and it
372 always croaks on error.
373 List of CHECK values
375 FB_DEFAULT
376 I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_DEFAULT ( == 0)
378 If CHECK is 0, encoding and decoding replace any malformed character
380 with a substitution character. When you encode, SUBCHAR is used. When
381 you decode, the Unicode REPLACEMENT CHARACTER, code point U+FFFD, is
382 used. If the data is supposed to be UTF-8, an optional lexical warning
383 of warning category "utf8" is given.
384 FB_CROAK
386 I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_CROAK ( == 1)
388 If CHECK is 1, methods immediately die with an error message.
390 Therefore, when CHECK is 1, you should trap exceptions with "eval{}",
391 unless you really want to let it "die".
392 FB_QUIET
394 I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_QUIET
396 If CHECK is set to "Encode::FB_QUIET", encoding and decoding
398 immediately return the portion of the data that has been processed so
399 far when an error occurs. The data argument is overwritten with
400 everything after that point; that is, the unprocessed portion of the
401 data. This is handy when you have to call "decode" repeatedly in the
402 case where your source data may contain partial multi-byte character
403 sequences, (that is, you are reading with a fixed-width buffer). Here's
404 some sample code to do exactly that:
405 my($buffer, $string) = ("", "");
407 while (read($fh, $buffer, 256, length($buffer))) {
408 $string .= decode($encoding, $buffer, Encode::FB_QUIET);
409 # $buffer now contains the unprocessed partial character
410 }
411 FB_WARN
413 I<CHECK> = Encode::FB_WARN
415 This is the same as "FB_QUIET" above, except that instead of being
417 silent on errors, it issues a warning. This is handy for when you are
418 debugging.
419 FB_PERLQQ FB_HTMLCREF FB_XMLCREF
421 perlqq mode (CHECK = Encode::FB_PERLQQ)
423 HTML charref mode (CHECK = Encode::FB_HTMLCREF)
424 XML charref mode (CHECK = Encode::FB_XMLCREF)
425 For encodings that are implemented by the "Encode::XS" module, "CHECK"
427 "==" "Encode::FB_PERLQQ" puts "encode" and "decode" into "perlqq"
428 fallback mode.
429 When you decode, "\xHH" is inserted for a malformed character, where HH
431 is the hex representation of the octet that could not be decoded to
432 utf8. When you encode, "\x{HHHH}" will be inserted, where HHHH is the
433 Unicode code point (in any number of hex digits) of the character that
434 cannot be found in the character repertoire of the encoding.
435 The HTML/XML character reference modes are about the same. In place of
437 "\x{HHHH}", HTML uses "&#NNN;" where NNN is a decimal number, and XML
438 uses "&#xHHHH;" where HHHH is the hexadecimal number.
439 In "Encode" 2.10 or later, "LEAVE_SRC" is also implied.
441 The bitmask
443 These modes are all actually set via a bitmask. Here is how the
445 "FB_XXX" constants are laid out. You can import the "FB_XXX" constants
446 via "use Encode qw(:fallbacks)", and you can import the generic bitmask
447 constants via "use Encode qw(:fallback_all)".
448 FB_DEFAULT FB_CROAK FB_QUIET FB_WARN FB_PERLQQ
450 DIE_ON_ERR 0x0001 X
451 WARN_ON_ERR 0x0002 X
452 RETURN_ON_ERR 0x0004 X X
453 LEAVE_SRC 0x0008 X
454 PERLQQ 0x0100 X
455 HTMLCREF 0x0200
456 XMLCREF 0x0400
457 LEAVE_SRC
459 Encode::LEAVE_SRC
461 If the "Encode::LEAVE_SRC" bit is not set but CHECK is set, then the
463 source string to encode() or decode() will be overwritten in place. If
464 you're not interested in this, then bitwise-OR it with the bitmask.
465 coderef for CHECK
467 As of "Encode" 2.12, "CHECK" can also be a code reference which takes
468 the ordinal value of the unmapped character as an argument and returns
469 octets that represent the fallback character. For instance:
470 $ascii = encode("ascii", $utf8, sub{ sprintf "<U+%04X>", shift });
472 Acts like "FB_PERLQQ" but U+XXXX is used instead of "\x{XXXX}".
474 Fallback for "decode" must return decoded string (sequence of
476 characters) and takes a list of ordinal values as its arguments. So for
477 example if you wish to decode octets as UTF-8, and use ISO-8859-15 as a
478 fallback for bytes that are not valid UTF-8, you could write
479 $str = decode 'UTF-8', $octets, sub {
481 my $tmp = join '', map chr, @_;
482 return decode 'ISO-8859-15', $tmp;
483 };
484
486 To define a new encoding, use:
487 use Encode qw(define_encoding);
489 define_encoding($object, CANONICAL_NAME [, alias...]);
490 CANONICAL_NAME will be associated with $object. The object should
492 provide the interface described in Encode::Encoding. If more than two
493 arguments are provided, additional arguments are considered aliases for
494 $object.
495 See Encode::Encoding for details.
497
499 Before the introduction of Unicode support in Perl, The "eq" operator
500 just compared the strings represented by two scalars. Beginning with
501 Perl 5.8, "eq" compares two strings with simultaneous consideration of
502 the UTF8 flag. To explain why we made it so, I quote from page 402 of
503 Programming Perl, 3rd ed.
504 Goal #1:
506 Old byte-oriented programs should not spontaneously break on the old
507 byte-oriented data they used to work on.
508 Goal #2:
510 Old byte-oriented programs should magically start working on the new
511 character-oriented data when appropriate.
512 Goal #3:
514 Programs should run just as fast in the new character-oriented mode
515 as in the old byte-oriented mode.
516 Goal #4:
518 Perl should remain one language, rather than forking into a byte-
519 oriented Perl and a character-oriented Perl.
520 When Programming Perl, 3rd ed. was written, not even Perl 5.6.0 had
522 been born yet, many features documented in the book remained
523 unimplemented for a long time. Perl 5.8 corrected much of this, and
524 the introduction of the UTF8 flag is one of them. You can think of
525 there being two fundamentally different kinds of strings and string-
526 operations in Perl: one a byte-oriented mode for when the internal
527 UTF8 flag is off, and the other a character-oriented mode for when the
528 internal UTF8 flag is on.
529 This UTF8 flag is not visible in Perl scripts, exactly for the same
531 reason you cannot (or rather, you don't have to) see whether a scalar
532 contains a string, an integer, or a floating-point number. But you
533 can still peek and poke these if you will. See the next section.
534 Messing with Perl's Internals
536 The following API uses parts of Perl's internals in the current
537 implementation. As such, they are efficient but may change in a future
538 release.
539 is_utf8
541 is_utf8(STRING [, CHECK])
543 [INTERNAL] Tests whether the UTF8 flag is turned on in the STRING. If
545 CHECK is true, also checks whether STRING contains well-formed UTF-8.
546 Returns true if successful, false otherwise.
547 Typically only necessary for debugging and testing. Don't use this
549 flag as a marker to distinguish character and binary data, that should
550 be decided for each variable when you write your code.
551 CAVEAT: If STRING has UTF8 flag set, it does NOT mean that STRING is
553 UTF-8 encoded and vice-versa.
554 As of Perl 5.8.1, utf8 also has the "utf8::is_utf8" function.
556 _utf8_on
558 _utf8_on(STRING)
560 [INTERNAL] Turns the STRING's internal UTF8 flag on. The STRING is not
562 checked for containing only well-formed UTF-8. Do not use this unless
563 you know with absolute certainty that the STRING holds only well-formed
564 UTF-8. Returns the previous state of the UTF8 flag (so please don't
565 treat the return value as indicating success or failure), or "undef" if
566 STRING is not a string.
567 NOTE: For security reasons, this function does not work on tainted
569 values.
570 _utf8_off
572 _utf8_off(STRING)
574 [INTERNAL] Turns the STRING's internal UTF8 flag off. Do not use
576 frivolously. Returns the previous state of the UTF8 flag, or "undef"
577 if STRING is not a string. Do not treat the return value as indicative
578 of success or failure, because that isn't what it means: it is only the
579 previous setting.
580 NOTE: For security reasons, this function does not work on tainted
582 values.
583
585 ....We now view strings not as sequences of bytes, but as sequences
586 of numbers in the range 0 .. 2**32-1 (or in the case of 64-bit
587 computers, 0 .. 2**64-1) -- Programming Perl, 3rd ed.
588 That has historically been Perl's notion of UTF-8, as that is how UTF-8
590 was first conceived by Ken Thompson when he invented it. However,
591 thanks to later revisions to the applicable standards, official UTF-8
592 is now rather stricter than that. For example, its range is much
593 narrower (0 .. 0x10_FFFF to cover only 21 bits instead of 32 or 64
594 bits) and some sequences are not allowed, like those used in surrogate
595 pairs, the 31 non-character code points 0xFDD0 .. 0xFDEF, the last two
596 code points in any plane (0xXX_FFFE and 0xXX_FFFF), all non-shortest
597 encodings, etc.
598 The former default in which Perl would always use a loose
600 interpretation of UTF-8 has now been overruled:
601 From: Larry Wall <larry@wall.org>
603 Date: December 04, 2004 11:51:58 JST
604 To: perl-unicode@perl.org
605 Subject: Re: Make Encode.pm support the real UTF-8
606 Message-Id: <20041204025158.GA28754@wall.org>
607 On Fri, Dec 03, 2004 at 10:12:12PM +0000, Tim Bunce wrote:
609 : I've no problem with 'utf8' being perl's unrestricted uft8 encoding,
610 : but "UTF-8" is the name of the standard and should give the
611 : corresponding behaviour.
612 For what it's worth, that's how I've always kept them straight in my
614 head.
615 Also for what it's worth, Perl 6 will mostly default to strict but
617 make it easy to switch back to lax.
618 Larry
620 Got that? As of Perl 5.8.7, "UTF-8" means UTF-8 in its current sense,
622 which is conservative and strict and security-conscious, whereas "utf8"
623 means UTF-8 in its former sense, which was liberal and loose and lax.
624 "Encode" version 2.10 or later thus groks this subtle but critically
625 important distinction between "UTF-8" and "utf8".
626 encode("utf8", "\x{FFFF_FFFF}", 1); # okay
628 encode("UTF-8", "\x{FFFF_FFFF}", 1); # croaks
629 In the "Encode" module, "UTF-8" is actually a canonical name for
631 "utf-8-strict". That hyphen between the "UTF" and the "8" is critical;
632 without it, "Encode" goes "liberal" and (perhaps overly-)permissive:
633 find_encoding("UTF-8")->name # is 'utf-8-strict'
635 find_encoding("utf-8")->name # ditto. names are case insensitive
636 find_encoding("utf_8")->name # ditto. "_" are treated as "-"
637 find_encoding("UTF8")->name # is 'utf8'.
638 Perl's internal UTF8 flag is called "UTF8", without a hyphen. It
640 indicates whether a string is internally encoded as "utf8", also
641 without a hyphen.
642
644 Encode::Encoding, Encode::Supported, Encode::PerlIO, encoding,
645 perlebcdic, "open" in perlfunc, perlunicode, perluniintro, perlunifaq,
646 perlunitut utf8, the Perl Unicode Mailing List
647 <http://lists.perl.org/list/perl-unicode.html>
648
650 This project was originated by the late Nick Ing-Simmons and later
651 maintained by Dan Kogai <dankogai@cpan.org>. See AUTHORS for a full
652 list of people involved. For any questions, send mail to
653 <perl-unicode@perl.org> so that we can all share.
654 While Dan Kogai retains the copyright as a maintainer, credit should go
656 to all those involved. See AUTHORS for a list of those who submitted
657 code to the project.
658
660 Copyright 2002-2014 Dan Kogai <dankogai@cpan.org>.
661 This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
663 under the same terms as Perl itself.
664perl v5.28.0 2018-04-22 Encode(3)