Win32::Codepage - get Win32 codepage information

NAME

Win32::Codepage - get Win32 codepage information

LICENSE

Copyright 2005 Clotho Advanced Media, Inc., <cpan@clotho.com>

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

SYNOPSIS

    use Win32::Codepage;
    print "Current language: " . Win32::Codepage::get_codepage() . "\n";  # e.g. "en-us"
    print "Install language: " . Win32::Codepage::get_install_codepage() . "\n";
    
    use Encode qw(encode);
    my $w32encoding = Win32::Codepage::get_encoding();  # e.g. "cp1252"
    my $encoding = $w32encoding ? Encode::resolve_alias($w32encoding) : '';
    print $encoding ? encode($string, $encoding) : $string;

DESCRIPTION

This module is intended as a companion to Win32::Locale. That module offers information about user prefs for language and locale. However, Windows has a separate setting for how files and filenames are encoded by default, which is specified by the ``codepage'' (a legacy term from DOS days). It is possible to be on a computer whose language, date, currency, etc are set to English, but the file contents and filesystem names default to SHIFT-JIS (Japanese) encoding.

This module offers information about that codepage, which allows your Perl code to know what encoding to expect for file names and file contents.

On Windows XP, you can change the current codepage from the default via Control Panel > Regional and Language Settings > Advanced tab. If you change it to, say, Japanese and then reboot, the default codepage will be cp932, which is Microsoft's version of SHIFT-JIS. This will allow non-Unicode Windows applications (like ActiveState Perl) to read filenames that contain Japanese characters. If you have files named with Japanese characters but your codepage is set to cp1252 (Microsoft's version of ISO-latin-1), then the foreign characters in the filename appear as ? to Perl.

If there's a better way around this than messing with codepages, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! I hate that I ever had to write this module...

SEE ALSO

the Win32::Locale manpage

I tried to contact the author of that module to get him to extend his distribution to include the codepage functionality, but I received no response for seven months. So, I created this module. See the RT ticket: http://rt.cpan.org/Ticket/Display.html

FUNCTIONS

get_codepage
Returns the language name for the current codepage language. For example en-us or ja. Returns false if the codepage language cannot be identified.

If this function is passed an argument (not recommended), then it returns the language name for the specified language ID instead of the system language ID.

get_install_codepage
Returns the language name for the installed codepage language. This is the same as get_codepage(), but refers to the codepage that was the default when Windows was first installed.

get_encoding
Returns an encoding name usable with Encode.pm based on the current codepage. For example, cp1252 for iso-8859-1 (latin-1) or cp932 for Shift-JIS Japanese. Returns false if an encoding cannot be identified.

Note: this only returns encoding names that start with cp.

get_ms_codepage
Returns the numeric language ID for the current codepage language. For example 0x0409 for en-us or 0x0411 for ja. Returns false if the codepage cannot be identified.

get_ms_install_codepage
Returns the numeric language ID for the installed codepage language. This is the same as get_ms_codepage(), but refers to the codepage that was the default when Windows was first installed.

AUTHOR

Clotho Advanced Media, Inc. cpan@clotho.com

Primary developer: Chris Dolan

 Win32::Codepage - get Win32 codepage information