Hi
First many thanks for all the familly of LWP, HTML excellent modules and
the work invested on them.
My question concerns the decode_entities, unicode and *some* HTML
entities (the ones in the range 128-255 chr() range)
The manual says for decode_entities "This routine replaces HTML entities
found in the $string with the corresponding Unicode character"
So I was expecting that if I decode the nbsp entity I would get the
U+00A0 character (in perl \x{A0})
I do:
================================================================
perl -e 'use Encode; use Data::Dumper; use HTML::Entities; $str =
" "; HTML::Entities::decode_entities( $str ); print Dumper($str)'
$VAR1 = '�';
================================================================
I see on my terminal the replacement character - black diamond with
question mark, whereas I would expect to see sth like :
$VAR1 = "\x{a0}";
If I do the same with the euro enity:
================================================================
perl -e 'use Encode; use Data::Dumper; use HTML::Entities; $str =
"€"; HTML::Entities::decode_entities( $str ); print Dumper($str)'
$VAR1 = "\x{20ac}";
================================================================
I do get the expected result (the perl U+20AC unicode character)
Trying to dig a bit more I noticed the following:
================================================================
$ perl -e 'use HTML::Entities; $str = " ";
HTML::Entities::decode_entities( $str ); print $str' | hexdump -C
00000000 a0 |.|
00000001
perl -e 'use HTML::Entities; $str = "€";
HTML::Entities::decode_entities( $str ); print $str' | hexdump -C
Wide character in print at -e line 1.
00000000 e2 82 ac |...|
00000003
perl -e 'use Encode; use HTML::Entities; $str = "€";
HTML::Entities::decode_entities( $str ); $t =
Encode::encode("UTF-8",$str); print $t' | hexdump -C
00000000 e2 82 ac |...|
00000003
================================================================
In the nbsp case I get the byte 'a0' whereas I would expect the bytes
'c2 a0' (for utf-8).
In the 1st euro case I do get the bytes 'e2 82 ac' that are the proper
bytes for U+20AC in utf-8. I do get a "Wide character in print" warning
from print(), because the str isn't encoded properly.
In the 2nd euro case I get the same bytes (correct U+20AC in utf-8) and
no warn message from print(), since I do encode properly.
So to rephrase my question: why don't I see "\x{a0}" (in the perl
sting), or 'c2a0' in the bytes streamed, when I decode the nbsp HTML
entity? Wouldn't these be the expected results?
Regards
Vangelis
PS Forgive my ignorance if I say sth stupid. I think I do understand
some aspects of unicode handling in perl, but I haven't run out of room
for improvement.
