perl and UTF-8

[Anand Buddhdev]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2004 at 11:27:30AM -0400, Scot L. Harris wrote:

> I seem to recall some limited discussion previously regarding the UTF-8
> support that was introduced as far back as RH8.  I recently ran into
> this problem again on FC2 when installing a package that uses perl.  
> 
> To resolve the problem I needed to edit the /etc/sysconfig/i18n file and
> remove the .UTF-8 from the LANG variable.
> 
> I don't think this is a bug in perl.  As such why the insistence that
> UTF-8 be the default?  What does this really buy?
> 
> Any chance of getting this changed in future releases?

UTF is the future, and in the long run, it's better if all software
and systems know about and use UTF. It was a bold step by Redhat to
make UTF the default way back in version 8, and it caused some
problems initially, but most problems are now solved. I don't think
they will change this in the future, and I personally think it's a
good idea. Just be aware that sed and grep are quite slow in UTF
environments, and you should run then like this if you know your text
is ascii:

LANG=C grep ....

-- 
Anand Buddhdev
Celtel International