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Unicode::ICU -ICU in Perl

This library is a binding to ICU, a library for internationalization (i18n),localization (l10n), Unicode, and all kinds of related stuff.

We currently only expose a subset of ICU’s (quite vast!) functionality.More can be added as need arises.

Most functionality exists in submodules under this namespace. Theirnames correspond roughly with modules or classes in ICU’s C and C++ APIs:

• Unicode::ICU::MessageFormat

  NB: This exposes a lot ofother ICU functionality like formatting of numbers, dates/times, and plurals.

• Unicode::ICU::MessagePattern

• Unicode::ICU::ListFormatter

• Unicode::ICU::IDN

• Unicode::ICU::Locale

The present namespace exposes limited controls of its own,as described below.

Unicode::ICU’s documentation tries to be helpful while avoidingduplication of ICU’s own documentation. If something is unclear,consult the corresponding parts of ICU’s documentation to see if thathelps. If confusion persists, file a documentation bug.

Generally speaking, all strings into and out of this distribution’sinterfaces arecharacter strings, not byte strings. If you get awide-character warning or corrupted output, you may have neglected eithera decode prior to calling ICU or an encode afterward. CPAN’sEncode::Simple provides a nice, fail-early-fail-often interface forthese operations.

This module is tested with ICU versions as far back as 4.2.1 (the versionthat ships with CloudLinux 6). Some of this module’s functionality, though,is unavailable in certain ICU versions.

Errors from ICU areUnicode::ICU::X::ICU instances. Most others areplain strings; other errors are thrown as documented.

• ICU_VERSION - a text string (e.g.,67.1)
• ICU_MAJOR_VERSION - an unsigned integer (e.g.,67)
• ICU_MINOR_VERSION - an unsigned integer (e.g.,1)

A wrapper around ICU’su_errorName(), which gives a human-readablename (e.g.,U_BUFFER_OVERFLOW_ERROR) for an error code.

Some other ICU bindings exist on CPAN that do different things fromthis module:

• Sort::Naturally::ICU
• Unicode::ICU::Collator