What is utf8 vs bytes in Perl?

In Perl, the terms "utf8" and "bytes" refer to different ways of handling string data, particularly when it comes to character encoding. Understanding the distinction between these two types can significantly impact how you process and manipulate text in your Perl scripts.

UTF-8

UTF-8 is a variable-width character encoding used for electronic communication. In Perl, strings can be marked as UTF-8, allowing for the representation of a vast range of characters, including those from various languages and special symbols. When a string is treated as UTF-8, Perl uses its internal mechanisms to handle multi-byte characters properly.

Bytes

The "bytes" pragma tells Perl to treat strings as sequences of bytes rather than characters. This means that operations on such strings will treat each character as a single byte, which can be appropriate for dealing with binary data or when you need exact control over byte representation.

Example

# Define a UTF-8 string use utf8; my $utf8_string = "Hello, world! Привет, мир!"; # Define a byte string use bytes; my $byte_string = "Hello, world! \x{D0} \x{9F}\x{D1}\x{80}\x{D0}\x{B8}\x{D0}\x{B2}, \x{D0}\x{BC}\x{D0}\x{B8}\x{D1}\x{80}!"; print "$utf8_string\n"; # Properly displays UTF-8 characters print "$byte_string\n"; # Displays byte values

utf8 bytes Perl string encoding character encoding multi-byte characters

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