How does cross-platform issues (Windows, macOS, Linux) interact with Unicode and encodings?

Cross-platform issues regarding Unicode and encodings are critical for software development, especially when using languages like Perl. Each operating system (Windows, macOS, Linux) has its nuances when it comes to handling character encoding, which can lead to compatibility problems when transferring data across platforms.

For example, Windows often uses UTF-16 encoding for text files, while Linux and macOS may default to UTF-8. This inconsistency can cause applications to misinterpret text data, resulting in garbled characters or errors in string manipulation.

When working with Unicode in Perl, it is essential to specify the correct encoding when reading from or writing to files. Here's an example of how to handle UTF-8 encoding in Perl:

#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use open ':std', ':encoding(UTF-8)'; # Set standard input/output encoding to UTF-8 my $text = "Hello, World! Привет, мир!"; print $text, "\n"; # Properly handle and display UTF-8 text

Cross-platform Unicode Perl Windows macOS Linux encodings