[jdev] Ok, here's my tiny little Perl script

Thu Sep 29 13:17:42 CDT 2005

Tijl Houtbeckers wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 17:57:04 +0200, John Talbot <jtalbot at proionta.gr> 
> wrote:
>
>>
>> That is very surprising. Since Perl probably has nothing to do with the
>> unicode here, the culprit has to be jabberd then. I'll try to upgrade
>> (though I use the apt-get system for which the most recent versions
>> don't always exist).
>
> Back up a second there ;) Perl is notorious for being bad with 
> unicode, wether that's a repuation still deserved I don't know, but it 
> was justified in the past. And afaik never in the history of jabberd 
> has there been such a serious problem with UTF-8 handeling.

You are absolutely right. I tried using another public jabber server, 
before installing one myself, and same malfunction happened.
I even tried Psi, and that didn't make it work either.

> I think you should consider first:
> - is the file UTF-8? (you seem to have this covered)

Yes.

> - is your version of Perl configured right to read unicode UTF-8files..

I'm not sure about this... Perl can get configured? During compile time 
you mean? Also I didn't think that Perl could have anything to do with 
this, because the libraries (Net::XMPP::etc and Net::Jabber::etc) don't 
contain the string 'utf8' anywhere, so I was guessing that these 
libraries were just passing whatever data they found inside the <body> 
tags without regard for utf8 compliance... but I guess I was wrong?

> - *and* to use unicode for string handeling by default

No, it doesn't have that (and 5.8.6 has that?). It has got to be Perl's 
fault, but perhaps there's a way to avoid installing a second version of 
Perl on my system (I've got to keep the old one too, so many .debs are 
dependent on it in some way) - is this advice you're giving accurate? 
i.e. are newer versions of Perl handling unicode by default? If so, 
maybe I can just plug a 'use utf8;' command or type-in some CLI switch 
and make it all happen...

And what do you mean by Perl being able to read unicode files right? 
Aren't utf8 files just a series of bytes in Perl's eyes, just like any 
other file?

> - do you have the most recent Net::Jabber

Yes, and there's only two versions of Net::Jabber (0.1 and 1.0) so all 
have the same.

> Not critizing you or anything, but I'm worried you'll loose a lot of 
> time accomplishing very little trying to find a UTF-8 bug in jabberd. 
> Jabberd's unicode handeling is independant of how your system is 
> setup, how you build it, etc. The same can not be said for Perl. If 
> you're still not convinced it's not jabberd, try another server (a 
> public one).

Yes, and thanks, you did save me. Installing jabberd 1.4.4 was the next 
thing I was going to do... but it's Perl's fault actually :-)