Name Encode::ZapCP1252 - Zap Windows Western Gremlins Synopsis use Encode::ZapCP1252; zap_cp1252 $latin1_text; fix_cp1252 $utf8_text; Description Have you ever been processing a Web form submit, assuming that the incoming text was encoded in ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1), only to end up with a bunch of junk because someone pasted in content from Microsoft Word? Well, this is because Microsoft uses a superset of the Latin-1 encoding called "Windows Western" or "CP1252". So mostly things will come out right, but a few things--like curly quotes, m-dashes, elipses, and the like--will not. The differences are well-known; you see a nice chart at documenting the differences on Wikipedia . Of course, that won't really help you. What will help you is to quit using Latin-1 and switch to UTF-8. Then you can just convert from CP1252 to UTF-8 without losing a thing, just like this: use Encode; $text = decode 'cp1252', $text, 1; But I know that there are those of you out there stuck with Latin-1 and who don't want any junk charactrs from Word users, and that's where this module comes in. Its "zap_cp1252" function will zap those CP1252 gremlins for you, turning them into their appropriate ASCII approximations. Another case that can occaisionally come up is when you *are* using UTF-8, and you're reading in text that *claims* to be UTF-8, but it *still* ends up with some CP1252 gremlins mixed in with true UTF-8 characters. I've seen examples of just this sort of thing when processing GMail messages and attempting to insert them into a UTF-8 database. Doesn't work so well. So this module also offers "fix_cp1252", which converts those CP1252 gremlines into their UTF-8 equivalents. Usage This module exports two subroutines: "zap_cp1252()" and "fix_cp1252()". You use these subroutines like so: zap_cp1252 $text; fix_cp1252 $text; The "zap_cp1252()" subroutine performs *in place* conversions of any CP1252 gremlins into their appropriate ASCII approximations, while "fix_cp1252()" converts them, in place, into their UTF-8 equilvalents. Note that because the conversion happens in place, the data to be converted *cannot* be a string constant; it must be a scalar variable. For convenience, the converted string is also returned when the subroutines are called in a non-void context: my $fixed = zap_cp1252 $text; # $text and $fixed are the same. In Perl 5.8 and higher, the conversion will work whether the string is decoded to Perl's internal form (usually via "decode 'ISO-8859-1', $text") or the string is encoded (and thus simply processed by Perl as a series of bytes). The conversion will even work on a string that has not been decoded but has had its "utf8" flag flipped anyway (usually by an injudicious use of "Encode::_utf8_on()". This is to enable the highest possible likelyhood of removing those CP1252 gremlins no matter what kind of processing has already been executed on the string. Conversion Table Here's how the characters are converted to ASCII and UTF-8. The ASCII conversions are not perfect, but they should be good enough for general cleanup. If you want perfect, switch to UTF-8 and be done with it! Hex | Char | ASCII | UTF-8 Name -----+-------+-------+------------------------------------------- 0x80 | € | e | EURO SIGN 0x82 | ‚ | , | SINGLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK 0x83 | ƒ | f | LATIN SMALL LETTER F WITH HOOK 0x84 | „ | ,, | DOUBLE LOW-9 QUOTATION MARK 0x85 | … | ... | HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS 0x86 | † | + | DAGGER 0x87 | ‡ | ++ | DOUBLE DAGGER 0x88 | ˆ | ^ | MODIFIER LETTER CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT 0x89 | ‰ | % | PER MILLE SIGN 0x8a | Š | S | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH CARON 0x8b | ‹ | < | SINGLE LEFT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK 0x8c | Œ | OE | LATIN CAPITAL LIGATURE OE 0x8e | Ž | Z | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH CARON 0x91 | ‘ | ' | LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK 0x92 | ’ | ' | RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK 0x93 | “ | " | LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK 0x94 | ” | " | RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK 0x95 | • | * | BULLET 0x96 | – | - | EN DASH 0x97 | — | -- | EM DASH 0x98 | ˜ | ~ | SMALL TILDE 0x99 | ™ | (tm) | TRADE MARK SIGN 0x9a | š | s | LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH CARON 0x9b | › | > | SINGLE RIGHT-POINTING ANGLE QUOTATION MARK 0x9c | œ | oe | LATIN SMALL LIGATURE OE 0x9e | ž | z | LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH CARON 0x9f | Ÿ | Y | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Y WITH DIAERESIS Changing the Tables Don't like these conversions? You can modify them to your hearts content by accessing this module's internal conversion tables. For example, if you wanted "zap_cp1252()" to use an uppercase "E" for the euro sign, just do this: local $Encode::ZapCP1252::ascii_for{"\x80"} = 'E'; Or if, for some bizarre reason, you wanted the UTF-8 equivalent for a bullet converted by "fix_cp1252()" to really be an asterisk (why would you? Just use "zap_cp1252" for that!), you can do this: local $Encode::ZapCP1252::utf8_for{"\x95"} = '*'; Just remember, without "locala" this would be a global change. In that case, be careful if your code zaps CP1252 elsewhere. Of course, it shouldn't really be doing that. These functions are just for cleaning up messes in one spot in your code, not for making a fundamental part of your text handling. For that, use Encode. See Also Encode Wikipedia: Windows-1252 Support This module is stored in an open GitHub repository . Feel free to fork and contribute! Please file bug reports via GitHub Issues or by sending mail to bug-Encode-CP1252@rt.cpan.org . Author David Wheeler Acknowledgements My thanks to Sean Burke for sending me his original method for converting CP1252 gremlins to more-or-less appropriate ASCII characters. Copyright and License Copyright (c) 2005-2010 Kineticode, Inc. Some Rights Reserved. This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.