Encode::TW

Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (3perl)
Updated: 2019-04-20
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NAME

Encode::TW - Taiwan-based Chinese Encodings

SYNOPSIS

    use Encode qw/encode decode/; 
    $big5 = encode("big5", $utf8); # loads Encode::TW implicitly
    $utf8 = decode("big5", $big5); # ditto

DESCRIPTION

This module implements tradition Chinese charset encodings as used in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Encodings supported are as follows.

  Canonical   Alias             Description
  --------------------------------------------------------------------
  big5-eten   /\bbig-?5$/i      Big5 encoding (with ETen extensions)
          /\bbig5-?et(en)?$/i
          /\btca-?big5$/i
  big5-hkscs  /\bbig5-?hk(scs)?$/i
              /\bhk(scs)?-?big5$/i
                                Big5 + Cantonese characters in Hong Kong
  MacChineseTrad                Big5 + Apple Vendor Mappings
  cp950                         Code Page 950 
                                = Big5 + Microsoft vendor mappings
  --------------------------------------------------------------------

To find out how to use this module in detail, see Encode.

NOTES

Due to size concerns, "EUC-TW" (Extended Unix Character), "CCCII" (Chinese Character Code for Information Interchange), "BIG5PLUS" (CMEX's Big5+) and "BIG5EXT" (CMEX's Big5e) are distributed separately on CPAN, under the name Encode::HanExtra. That module also contains extra China-based encodings.

BUGS

Since the original "big5" encoding (1984) is not supported anywhere (glibc and DOS-based systems uses "big5" to mean "big5-eten"; Microsoft uses "big5" to mean "cp950"), a conscious decision was made to alias "big5" to "big5-eten", which is the de facto superset of the original big5.

The "CNS11643" encoding files are not complete. For common "CNS11643" manipulation, please use "EUC-TW" in Encode::HanExtra, which contains planes 1-7.

The ASCII region (0x00-0x7f) is preserved for all encodings, even though this conflicts with mappings by the Unicode Consortium.