NAME¶
enc2xs -- Perl Encode Module Generator
SYNOPSIS¶
enc2xs -[options]
enc2xs -M ModName mapfiles...
enc2xs -C
DESCRIPTION¶
enc2xs builds a Perl extension for use by Encode from either Unicode
Character Mapping files (.ucm) or Tcl Encoding Files (.enc). Besides being
used internally during the build process of the Encode module, you can use
enc2xs to add your own encoding to perl. No knowledge of XS is
necessary.
Quick Guide¶
If you want to know as little about Perl as possible but need to add a new
encoding, just read this chapter and forget the rest.
- 0.
- Have a .ucm file ready. You can get it from somewhere or
you can write your own from scratch or you can grab one from the Encode
distribution and customize it. For the UCM format, see the next Chapter.
In the example below, I'll call my theoretical encoding myascii, defined
in my.ucm. "$" is a shell prompt.
$ ls -F
my.ucm
- 1.
- Issue a command as follows;
$ enc2xs -M My my.ucm
generating Makefile.PL
generating My.pm
generating README
generating Changes
Now take a look at your current directory. It should look like this.
$ ls -F
Makefile.PL My.pm my.ucm t/
The following files were created.
Makefile.PL - MakeMaker script
My.pm - Encode submodule
t/My.t - test file
- 1.1.
- If you want *.ucm installed together with the modules, do
as follows;
$ mkdir Encode
$ mv *.ucm Encode
$ enc2xs -M My Encode/*ucm
- 2.
- Edit the files generated. You don't have to if you have no
time AND no intention to give it to someone else. But it is a good idea to
edit the pod and to add more tests.
- 3.
- Now issue a command all Perl Mongers love:
$ perl Makefile.PL
Writing Makefile for Encode::My
- 4.
- Now all you have to do is make.
$ make
cp My.pm blib/lib/Encode/My.pm
/usr/local/bin/perl /usr/local/bin/enc2xs -Q -O \
-o encode_t.c -f encode_t.fnm
Reading myascii (myascii)
Writing compiled form
128 bytes in string tables
384 bytes (75%) saved spotting duplicates
1 bytes (0.775%) saved using substrings
....
chmod 644 blib/arch/auto/Encode/My/My.bs
$
The time it takes varies depending on how fast your machine is and how large
your encoding is. Unless you are working on something big like euc-tw, it
won't take too long.
- 5.
- You can "make install" already but you should
test first.
$ make test
PERL_DL_NONLAZY=1 /usr/local/bin/perl -Iblib/arch -Iblib/lib \
-e 'use Test::Harness qw(&runtests $verbose); \
$verbose=0; runtests @ARGV;' t/*.t
t/My....ok
All tests successful.
Files=1, Tests=2, 0 wallclock secs
( 0.09 cusr + 0.01 csys = 0.09 CPU)
- 6.
- If you are content with the test result, just "make
install"
- 7.
- If you want to add your encoding to Encode's demand-loading
list (so you don't have to "use Encode::YourEncoding"), run
enc2xs -C
to update Encode::ConfigLocal, a module that controls local settings. After
that, "use Encode;" is enough to load your encodings on
demand.
The Unicode Character Map¶
Encode uses the Unicode Character Map (UCM) format for source character
mappings. This format is used by IBM's ICU package and was adopted by Nick
Ing-Simmons for use with the Encode module. Since UCM is more flexible than
Tcl's Encoding Map and far more user-friendly, this is the recommended format
for Encode now.
A UCM file looks like this.
#
# Comments
#
<code_set_name> "US-ascii" # Required
<code_set_alias> "ascii" # Optional
<mb_cur_min> 1 # Required; usually 1
<mb_cur_max> 1 # Max. # of bytes/char
<subchar> \x3F # Substitution char
#
CHARMAP
<U0000> \x00 |0 # <control>
<U0001> \x01 |0 # <control>
<U0002> \x02 |0 # <control>
....
<U007C> \x7C |0 # VERTICAL LINE
<U007D> \x7D |0 # RIGHT CURLY BRACKET
<U007E> \x7E |0 # TILDE
<U007F> \x7F |0 # <control>
END CHARMAP
- •
- Anything that follows "#" is treated as a
comment.
- •
- The header section continues until a line containing the
word CHARMAP. This section has a form of <keyword> value, one
pair per line. Strings used as values must be quoted. Barewords are
treated as numbers. \xXX represents a byte.
Most of the keywords are self-explanatory. subchar means substitution
character, not subcharacter. When you decode a Unicode sequence to this
encoding but no matching character is found, the byte sequence defined
here will be used. For most cases, the value here is \x3F; in ASCII, this
is a question mark.
- •
- CHARMAP starts the character map section. Each line has a
form as follows:
<UXXXX> \xXX.. |0 # comment
^ ^ ^
| | +- Fallback flag
| +-------- Encoded byte sequence
+-------------- Unicode Character ID in hex
The format is roughly the same as a header section except for the fallback
flag: | followed by 0..3. The meaning of the possible values is as
follows:
- |0
- Round trip safe. A character decoded to Unicode encodes
back to the same byte sequence. Most characters have this flag.
- |1
- Fallback for unicode -> encoding. When seen, enc2xs adds
this character for the encode map only.
- |2
- Skip sub-char mapping should there be no code point.
- |3
- Fallback for encoding -> unicode. When seen, enc2xs adds
this character for the decode map only.
- •
- And finally, END OF CHARMAP ends the section.
When you are manually creating a UCM file, you should copy ascii.ucm or an
existing encoding which is close to yours, rather than write your own from
scratch.
When you do so, make sure you leave at least
U0000 to
U0020 as is,
unless your environment is EBCDIC.
CAVEAT: not all features in UCM are implemented. For example, icu:state
is not used. Because of that, you need to write a perl module if you want to
support algorithmical encodings, notably the ISO-2022 series. Such modules
include Encode::JP::2022_JP, Encode::KR::2022_KR, and Encode::TW::HZ.
Coping with duplicate mappings¶
When you create a map, you SHOULD make your mappings round-trip safe. That is,
"encode('your-encoding', decode('your-encoding', $data)) eq $data"
stands for all characters that are marked as "|0". Here is how to
make sure:
- •
- Sort your map in Unicode order.
- •
- When you have a duplicate entry, mark either one with '|1'
or '|3'.
- •
- And make sure the '|1' or '|3' entry FOLLOWS the '|0'
entry.
Here is an example from big5-eten.
<U2550> \xF9\xF9 |0
<U2550> \xA2\xA4 |3
Internally Encoding -> Unicode and Unicode -> Encoding Map looks like
this;
E to U U to E
--------------------------------------
\xF9\xF9 => U2550 U2550 => \xF9\xF9
\xA2\xA4 => U2550
So it is round-trip safe for \xF9\xF9. But if the line above is upside down,
here is what happens.
E to U U to E
--------------------------------------
\xA2\xA4 => U2550 U2550 => \xF9\xF9
(\xF9\xF9 => U2550 is now overwritten!)
The Encode package comes with
ucmlint, a crude but sufficient utility to
check the integrity of a UCM file. Check under the Encode/bin directory for
this.
When in doubt, you can use
ucmsort, yet another utility under Encode/bin
directory.
Bookmarks¶
- •
- ICU Home Page http://www.icu-project.org/
<http://www.icu-project.org/>
- •
- ICU Character Mapping Tables
http://site.icu-project.org/charts/charset
<http://site.icu-project.org/charts/charset>
- •
- ICU:Conversion Data
http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/conversion-data.html
<http://www.icu-project.org/userguide/conversion-data.html>
SEE ALSO¶
Encode, perlmod, perlpod