perlunicodefile-io

how to get rid of `Wide character in print at`?

I have file /tmp/xxx with next content:

00000000 D0 BA D0 B8 │ D1 80 D0 B8 │ D0 BB D0 B8 │ D0 BA     к и р и л и к

When I read content of file and print it I get the error:

Wide character in print at ...

The source is:

use utf8;
open my $fh, '<:encoding(UTF-8)', '/tmp/xxx';
print scalar <$fh>

The output from print is:

кирилик
Solution

  • The use utf8 means Perl expects your source code to be UTF-8.

    Your problem is that although you read the input correctly, you output the data to whatever standard output is set up to be. By default, that is not UTF-8.

    The open pragma can change the encoding of the standard filehandles, including standard output:

    use open qw( :std :encoding(UTF-8) );

    And, whatever is going to deal with your output needs to expect UTF-8 too. If you want to see it correctly in your terminal, then you need to set up that correctly (but that's nothing to do with Perl).