Jean-Michel Hiver <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

> > How can I calculate the MD5 message digest of a Unicode string in Perl
> > 5.8? The MD5 hash algorithm naturally expects a sequence of bytes as its
> > input, and I have a string with a sequence of characters. I tried
> > 
> >   $ perl -e 'use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex); print md5_hex("\x{20ac}");'
> >   Wide character in subroutine entry at -e line 1.
> 
> I'd do something like that:
> 
>   use Encode;
>   use Digest::MD5 qw(md5_hex);
> 
>   sub md5_hex
>   {
>     my $string = shift;
>     Encode::_utf8_off ($string);
>     return md5_hex ($string);
>   }

I would argue that it is much better to write it as:

    md5_hex(Encode::encode_utf8($string))

Playing with _utf8_{on,off} is ugly for good reason and will break if
the internal representation change.  Calling encode_utf8() should be
almost as efficient and is future-proof.

Regards,
Gisle

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