NAME Test::utf8 - handy utf8 tests

SYNOPSIS # check the string is good is_valid_string(string); # check the string is valid is_sane_utf8(string); # check not double encoded

  # check the string has certain attributes
  is_flagged_utf8($string1);   # has utf8 flag set
  is_within_ascii($string2);   # only has ascii chars in it
  isnt_within_ascii($string3); # has chars outside the ascii range
  is_within_latin_1($string4); # only has latin-1 chars in it
  isnt_within_ascii($string5); # has chars outside the latin-1 range

DESCRIPTION This module is a collection of tests useful for dealing with utf8 strings in Perl.

This module has two types of tests: The validity tests check if a string
is valid and not corrupt, whereas the characteristics tests will check
that string has a given set of characteristics.

Validity Tests is_valid_string($string,string,$testname) Checks if the string is “valid”, i.e. this passes and returns true unless the internal utf8 flag hasn’t been set on scalar that isn’t made up of a valid utf-8 byte sequence.

    This should *never* happen and, in theory, this test should always
    pass. Unless you (or a module you use) goes monkeying around inside
    a scalar using Encode's private functions or XS code you shouldn't
    ever end up in a situation where you've got a corrupt scalar. But if
    you do, and you do, then this function should help you detect the
    problem.

    To be clear, here's an example of the error case this can detect:

      my $mark = "Mark";
      my $leon = "L\x{e9}on";
      is_valid_string($mark);  # passes, not utf-8
      is_valid_string($leon);  # passes, not utf-8

      my $iloveny = "I \x{2665} NY";
      is_valid_string($iloveny);      # passes, proper utf-8

      my $acme = "L\x{c3}\x{a9}on";
      Encode::_utf8_on($acme);      # (please don't do things like this)
      is_valid_string($acme);       # passes, proper utf-8 byte sequence upgraded

      Encode::_utf8_on($leon);      # (this is why you don't do things like this)
      is_valid_string($leon);       # fails! the byte \x{e9} isn't valid utf-8

is_sane_utf8($string, $name)
    This test fails if the string contains something that looks like it
    might be dodgy utf8, i.e. containing something that looks like the
    multi-byte sequence for a latin-1 character but perl hasn't been
    instructed to treat as such. Strings that are not utf8 always
    automatically pass.

    Some examples may help:

      # This will pass as it's a normal latin-1 string
      is_sane_utf8("Hello L\x{e9}eon");

      # this will fail because the \x{c3}\x{a9} looks like the
      # utf8 byte sequence for e-acute
      my $string = "Hello L\x{c3}\x{a9}on";
      is_sane_utf8($string);

      # this will pass because the utf8 is correctly interpreted as utf8
      Encode::_utf8_on($string)
      is_sane_utf8($string);

    Obviously this isn't a hundred percent reliable. The edge case where
    this will fail is where you have "\x{c2}" (which is "LATIN CAPITAL
    LETTER WITH CIRCUMFLEX") or "\x{c3}" (which is "LATIN CAPITAL LETTER
    WITH TILDE") followed by one of the latin-1 punctuation symbols.

      # a capital letter A with tilde surrounded by smart quotes
      # this will fail because it'll see the "\x{c2}\x{94}" and think
      # it's actually the utf8 sequence for the end smart quote
      is_sane_utf8("\x{93}\x{c2}\x{94}");

    However, since this hardly comes up this test is reasonably reliable
    in most cases. Still, care should be applied in cases where dynamic
    data is placed next to latin-1 punctuation to avoid false negatives.

    There exists two situations to cause this test to fail; The string
    contains utf8 byte sequences and the string hasn't been flagged as
    utf8 (this normally means that you got it from an external source
    like a C library; When Perl needs to store a string internally as
    utf8 it does it's own encoding and flagging transparently) or a utf8
    flagged string contains byte sequences that when translated to
    characters themselves look like a utf8 byte sequence. The test
    diagnostics tells you which is the case.

String Characteristic Tests These routines allow you to check the range of characters in a string. Note that these routines are blind to the actual encoding perl internally uses to store the characters, they just check if the string contains only characters that can be represented in the named encoding:

is_within_ascii
    Tests that a string only contains characters that are in the ASCII
    character set.

is_within_latin_1
    Tests that a string only contains characters that are in latin-1.

Simply check if a scalar is or isn't flagged as utf8 by perl's
internals:

is_flagged_utf8($string, $name)
    Passes if the string is flagged by perl's internals as utf8, fails
    if it's not.

isnt_flagged_utf8($string,$name)
    The opposite of "is_flagged_utf8", passes if and only if the string
    isn't flagged as utf8 by perl's internals.

    Note: you can refer to this function as "isn't_flagged_utf8" if you
    really want to.

AUTHOR Written by Mark Fowler mark@twoshortplanks.com

COPYRIGHT Copyright Mark Fowler 2004,2012. All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.

BUGS None known. Please report any to me via the CPAN RT system. See http://rt.cpan.org/ for more details.

SEE ALSO Test::DoubleEncodedEntities for testing for double encoded HTML entities.