perltodo(1)
NAME
perltodo - Perl TO-DO List
DESCRIPTION
This is a list of wishes for Perl. Send updates to
perl5-porters@perl.org. If you want to work on any of these projects,
be sure to check the perl5-porters archives for past ideas, flames, and
propaganda. This will save you time and also prevent you from imple-
menting something that Larry has already vetoed. One set of archives
may be found at:
http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/
To do during 5.6.x
Support for I/O disciplines
"perlio" provides this, but the interface could be a lot more straight-
forward.
Autoload bytes.pm
When the lexer sees, for instance, "bytes::length", it should automati-
cally load the "bytes" pragma.
Make "\u{XXXX}" et al work
Danger, Will Robinson! Discussing the semantics of "\x{F00}", "\xF00"
and "\U{F00}" on P5P will lead to a long and boring flamewar.
Create a char *sv_pvprintify(sv, STRLEN *lenp, UV flags)
For displaying PVs with control characters, embedded nulls, and Uni-
code. This would be useful for printing warnings, or data and regex
dumping, not_a_number(), and so on.
Requirements: should handle both byte and UTF8 strings. isPRINT()
characters printed as-is, character less than 256 as \xHH, Unicode
characters as \x{HHH}. Don't assume ASCII-like, either, get somebody
on EBCDIC to test the output.
Possible options, controlled by the flags: - whitespace (other than ' '
of isPRINT()) printed as-is - use isPRINT_LC() instead of isPRINT() -
print control characters like this: "\cA" - print control characters
like this: "^A" - non-PRINTables printed as '.' instead of \xHH - use
\OOO instead of \xHH - use the C/Perl-metacharacters like \n, \t - have
a maximum length for the produced string (read it from *lenp) - append
a "..." to the produced string if the maximum length is exceeded -
really fancy: print unicode characters as \N{...}
NOTE: pv_display(), pv_uni_display(), sv_uni_display() are already
doing something like the above.
Overloadable regex assertions
This may or may not be possible with the current regular expression
engine. The idea is that, for instance, "\b" needs to be algorithmi-
cally computed if you're dealing with Thai text. Hence, the \b asser-
tion wants to be overloaded by a function.
Unicode
o Allow for long form of the General Category Properties, e.g
"\p{IsOpenPunctuation}", not just the abbreviated form, e.g.
"\p{IsPs}".
o Allow for the metaproperties: "XID Start", "XID Continue",
"NF*_NO", "NF*_MAYBE" (require the DerivedCoreProperties and Dervi-
ceNormalizationProperties files).
There are also multiple value properties still unimplemented:
"Numeric Type", "East Asian Width".
o
Case Mappings? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr21/
Mostly implemented (all of 1:1, 1:N, N:1), only the "final sigma"
and locale-specific rules of SpecCase are not implemented.
o UTF-8 identifier names should probably be canonicalized: NFC?
o UTF-8 in package names and sub names? The first is problematic
because of the mapping to pathnames, ditto for the second one if
one does autosplitting, for example. Some of this works already in
5.8.0, but essentially it is unsupported. Constructs to consider,
at the very least:
use utf8;
package UnicodePackage;
sub new { bless {}, shift };
sub UnicodeMethod1 { ... $_[0]->UnicodeMethod2(...) ... }
sub UnicodeMethod2 { ... } # in here caller(0) should contain Unicode
...
package main;
my $x = UnicodePackage->new;
print ref $x, "\n"; # should be Unicode
$x->UnicodeMethod1(...);
my $y = UnicodeMethod3 UnicodePackage ...;
In the above all UnicodeXxx contain (identifier-worthy) characters
beyond the code point 255, for example 256. Wherever package/class
or subroutine names can be returned needs to be checked for Unico-
deness.
See "UNICODE REGULAR EXPRESSION SUPPORT LEVEL" in perlunicode for
what's there and what's missing. Almost all of Levels 2 and 3 is miss-
ing, and as of 5.8.0 not even all of Level 1 is there. They have some
tricks Perl doesn't yet implement, such as character class subtraction.
http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr18/
Work out exit/die semantics for threads
There are some suggestions to use for example something like this:
default to "(thread exiting first will) wait for the other threads
until up to 60 seconds". Other possibilities:
use threads wait => 0;
Do not wait.
use threads wait_for => 10;
Wait up to 10 seconds.
use threads wait_for => -1;
Wait for ever.
http://archive.develooper.com/perl5-porters@perl.org/msg79618.html
Better support for nonpreemptive threading systems like GNU pth
To better support nonpreemptive threading systems, perhaps some of the
blocking functions internally in Perl should do a yield() before a
blocking call. (Now certain threads tests ({basic,list,thread.t}) sim-
ply do a yield() before they sleep() to give nonpreemptive thread
implementations a chance).
In some cases, like the GNU pth, which has replacement functions that
are nonblocking (pth_select instead of select), maybe Perl should be
using them instead when built for threading.
Typed lexicals for compiler
Compiler workarounds for Win32
AUTOLOADing in the compiler
Fixing comppadlist when compiling
Cleaning up exported namespace
Complete signal handling
Add "PERL_ASYNC_CHECK" to opcodes which loop; replace "sigsetjmp" with
"sigjmp"; check "wait" for signal safety.
Out-of-source builds
This was done for 5.6.0, but needs reworking for 5.7.x
POSIX realtime support
POSIX 1003.1 1996 Edition support--realtime stuff: POSIX semaphores,
message queues, shared memory, realtime clocks, timers, signals (the
metaconfig units mostly already exist for these)
UNIX98 support
Reader-writer locks, realtime/asynchronous IO
IPv6 Support
There are non-core modules, such as "Socket6", but these will need
integrating when IPv6 actually starts to really happen. See RFC 2292
and RFC 2553.
Long double conversion
Floating point formatting is still causing some weird test failures.
Locales
Locales and Unicode interact with each other in unpleasant ways. One
possible solution would be to adopt/support ICU:
http://oss.software.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/icu/project/
Arithmetic on non-Arabic numerals
"[1234567890]" aren't the only numerals any more.
POSIX Unicode character classes
("[=a=]" for equivalence classes, "[.ch.]" for collation.) These are
dependent on Unicode normalization and collation.
Factoring out common suffices/prefices in regexps (trie optimization)
Currently, the user has to optimize "foo|far" and "foo|goo" into
"f(?:oo|ar)" and "[fg]oo" by hand; this could be done automatically.
Security audit shipped utilities
All the code we ship with Perl needs to be sensible about temporary
file handling, locking, input validation, and so on.
Sort out the uid-setting mess
Currently there are several problems with the setting of uids ($<, $>
for the real and effective uids). Firstly, what exactly setuid() call
gets invoked in which platform is simply a big mess that needs to be
untangled. Secondly, the effects are apparently not standard across
platforms, (if you first set $< and then $>, or vice versa, being uid
== euid == zero, or just euid == zero, or as a normal user, what are
the results?). The test suite not (usually) being run as root means
that these things do not get much testing. Thirdly, there's quite
often a third uid called saved uid, and Perl has no knowledge of that
feature in any way. (If one has the saved uid of zero, one can get
back any real and effective uids.) As an example, to change also the
saved uid, one needs to set the real and effective uids twice-- in most
systems, that is: in HP-UX that doesn't seem to work.
Custom opcodes
Have a way to introduce user-defined opcodes without the subroutine
call overhead of an XSUB; the user should be able to create PP code.
Simon Cozens has some ideas on this.
DLL Versioning
Windows needs a way to know what version of an XS or "libperl" DLL it's
loading.
Introduce @( and @)
$( may return "foo bar baz". Unfortunately, since groups can theoreti-
cally have spaces in their names, this could be one, two or three
groups.
Floating point handling
"NaN" and "inf" support is particularly troublesome. (fp_classify(),
fp_class(), fp_class_d(), class(), isinf(), isfinite(), finite(),
isnormal(), unordered(), <ieeefp.h>, <fp_class.h> (there are metaconfig
units for all these) (I think), fp_setmask(), fp_getmask(),
fp_setround(), fp_getround() (no metaconfig units yet for these).
Don't forget finitel(), fp_classl(), fp_class_l(), (yes, both do,
unfortunately, exist), and unorderedl().)
As of Perl 5.6.1, there is a Perl macro, Perl_isnan().
IV/UV preservation
Nicholas Clark has done a lot of work on this, but work is continuing.
"+", "-" and "*" work, but guards need to be in place for "%", "/",
"&", "oct", "hex" and "pack".
Replace pod2html with something using Pod::Parser
The CPAN module "Marek::Pod::Html" may be a more suitable basis for a
"pod2html" converter; the current one duplicates the functionality
abstracted in "Pod::Parser", which makes updating the POD language dif-
ficult.
Automate module testing on CPAN
When a new Perl is being beta tested, porters have to manually grab
their favourite CPAN modules and test them - this should be done auto-
matically.
sendmsg and recvmsg
We have all the other BSD socket functions but these. There are meta-
config units for these functions which can be added. To avoid these
being new opcodes, a solution similar to the way "sockatmark" was added
would be preferable. (Autoload the "IO::whatever" module.)
Rewrite perlre documentation
The new-style patterns need full documentation, and the whole document
needs to be a lot clearer.
Convert example code to IO::Handle filehandles
Document Win32 choices
Check new modules
Make roffitall find pods and libs itself
Simon Cozens has done some work on this but it needs a rethink.
To do at some point
These are ideas that have been regularly tossed around, that most peo-
ple believe should be done maybe during 5.8.x
Remove regular expression recursion
Because the regular expression engine is recursive, badly designed
expressions can lead to lots of recursion filling up the stack. Ilya
claims that it is easy to convert the engine to being iterative, but
this has still not yet been done. There may be a regular expression
engine hit squad meeting at TPC5.
Memory leaks after failed eval
Perl will leak memory if you "eval "hlagh hlagh hlagh hlagh"". This is
partially because it attempts to build up an op tree for that code and
doesn't properly free it. The same goes for non-syntactically-correct
regular expressions. Hugo looked into this, but decided it needed a
mark-and-sweep GC implementation.
Alan notes that: The basic idea was to extend the parser token stack
("YYSTYPE") to include a type field so we knew what sort of thing each
element of the stack was. The perly.c code would then have to be post-
processed to record the type of each entry on the stack as it was
created, and the parser patched so that it could unroll the stack prop-
erly on error.
This is possible to do, but would be pretty messy to implement, as it
would rely on even more sed hackery in perly.fixer.
bitfields in pack
Cross compilation
Make Perl buildable with a cross-compiler. This will play havoc with
Configure, which needs to know how the target system will respond to
its tests; maybe "microperl" will be a good starting point here.
(Indeed, Bart Schuller reports that he compiled up "microperl" for the
Agenda PDA and it works fine.) A really big spanner in the works is
the bootstrapping build process of Perl: if the filesystem the target
systems sees is not the same what the build host sees, various input,
output, and (Perl) library files need to be copied back and forth.
As of 5.8.0 Configure mostly works for cross-compilation (used success-
fully for iPAQ Linux), miniperl gets built, but then building
DynaLoader (and other extensions) fails since MakeMaker knows nothing
of cross-compilation. (See INSTALL/Cross-compilation for the state of
things.)
Perl preprocessor / macros
Source filters help with this, but do not get us all the way. For
instance, it should be possible to implement the "??" operator somehow;
source filters don't (quite) cut it.
Perl lexer in Perl
Damian Conway is planning to work on this, but it hasn't happened yet.
Using POSIX calls internally
When faced with a BSD vs. SysV -style interface to some library or sys-
tem function, perl's roots show in that it typically prefers the BSD
interface (but falls back to the SysV one). One example is getpgrp().
Other examples include "memcpy" vs. "bcopy". There are others, mostly
in pp_sys.c.
Mostly, this item is a suggestion for which way to start a journey into
an "#ifdef" forest. It is not primarily a suggestion to eliminate any
of the "#ifdef" forests.
POSIX calls are perhaps more likely to be portable to unexpected archi-
tectures. They are also perhaps more likely to be actively maintained
by a current vendor. They are also perhaps more likely to be available
in thread-safe versions, if appropriate.
-i rename file when changed
It's only necessary to rename a file when inplace editing when the file
has changed. Detecting a change is perhaps the difficult bit.
All ARGV input should act like <>
eg "read(ARGV, ...)" doesn't currently read across multiple files.
Support for rerunning debugger
There should be a way of restarting the debugger on demand.
Test Suite for the Debugger
The debugger is a complex piece of software and fixing something here
may inadvertently break something else over there. To tame this
chaotic behaviour, a test suite is necessary.
my sub foo { }
The basic principle is sound, but there are problems with the semantics
of self-referential and mutually referential lexical subs: how to
declare the subs?
One-pass global destruction
Sweeping away all the allocated memory in one go is a laudable goal,
but it's difficult and in most cases, it's easier to let the memory get
freed by exiting.
Rewrite regexp parser
There has been talk recently of rewriting the regular expression parser
to produce an optree instead of a chain of opcodes; it's unclear
whether or not this would be a win.
Cache recently used regexps
This is to speed up
for my $re (@regexps) {
$matched++ if /$re/
}
"qr//" already gives us a way of saving compiled regexps, but it should
be done automatically.
Cross-compilation support
Bart Schuller reports that using "microperl" and a cross-compiler, he
got Perl working on the Agenda PDA. However, one cannot build a full
Perl because Configure needs to get the results for the target plat-
form, for the host.
Bit-shifting bitvectors
Given:
vec($v, 1000, 1) = 1;
One should be able to do
$v <<= 1;
and have the 999'th bit set.
Currently if you try with shift bitvectors you shift the NV/UV, instead
of the bits in the PV. Not very logical.
debugger pragma
The debugger is implemented in Perl in perl5db.pl; turning it into a
pragma should be easy, but making it work lexically might be more dif-
ficult. Fiddling with $^P would be necessary.
use less pragma
Identify areas where speed/memory tradeoffs can be made and have a hint
to switch between them.
switch structures
Although we have "Switch.pm" in core, Larry points to the dormant
"nswitch" and "cswitch" ops in pp.c; using these opcodes would be much
faster.
Cache eval tree
rcatmaybe
Shrink opcode tables
Optimize away @_
Look at the "reification" code in "av.c"
Prototypes versus indirect objects
Currently, indirect object syntax bypasses prototype checks.
Install HTML
HTML versions of the documentation need to be installed by default; a
call to "installhtml" from "installperl" may be all that's necessary.
Prototype method calls
Return context prototype declarations
magic_setisa
Garbage collection
There have been persistent mumblings about putting a mark-and-sweep
garbage detector into Perl; Alan Burlison has some ideas about this.
IO tutorial
Mark-Jason Dominus has the beginnings of one of these.
Rewrite perldoc
There are a few suggestions for what to do with "perldoc": maybe a
full-text search, an index function, locating pages on a particular
high-level subject, and so on.
Install .3p manpages
This is a bone of contention; we can create ".3p" manpages for each
built-in function, but should we install them by default? Tcl does
this, and it clutters up "apropos".
Unicode tutorial
Simon Cozens promises to do this before he gets old.
Update POSIX.pm for 1003.1-2
Retargetable installation
Allow @INC to be changed after Perl is built.
POSIX emulation on non-POSIX systems
Make "POSIX.pm" behave as POSIXly as possible everywhere, meaning we
have to implement POSIX equivalents for some functions if necessary.
Rename Win32 headers
Finish off lvalue functions
They don't work in the debugger, and they don't work for list or hash
slices.
Update sprintf documentation
Hugo van der Sanden plans to look at this.
Use fchown/fchmod internally
This has been done in places, but needs a thorough code review. Also
fchdir is available in some platforms.
Make v-strings overloaded objects
Instead of having to guess whether a string is a v-string and thus
needs to be displayed with %vd, make v-strings (readonly) objects
(class "vstring"?) with a stringify overload.
Allow restricted hash assignment
Currently you're not allowed to assign to a restricted hash at all,
even with the same keys.
%restricted = (foo => 42); # error
This should be allowed if the new keyset is a subset of the old keyset.
May require more extra code than we'd like in pp_aassign.
Should overload be inheritable?
Should overload be 'contagious' through @ISA so that derived classes
would inherit their base classes' overload definitions? What to do in
case of overload conflicts?
Taint rethink
Should taint be stopped from affecting control flow, if ($tainted)?
Should tainted symbolic method calls and subref calls be stopped?
(Look at Ruby's $SAFE levels for inspiration?)
Vague ideas
Ideas which have been discussed, and which may or may not happen.
ref() in list context
It's unclear what this should do or how to do it without breaking old
code.
Make tr/// return histogram of characters in list context
There is a patch for this, but it may require Unicodification.
Compile to real threaded code
Structured types
Modifiable $1 et al.
($x = "elephant") =~ /e(ph)/;
$1 = "g"; # $x = "elegant"
What happens if there are multiple (nested?) brackets? What if the
string changes between the match and the assignment?
Procedural interfaces for IO::*, etc.
Some core modules have been accused of being overly-OO. Adding procedu-
ral interfaces could demystify them.
RPC modules
Attach/detach debugger from running program
With "gdb", you can attach the debugger to a running program if you
pass the process ID. It would be good to do this with the Perl debugger
on a running Perl program, although I'm not sure how it would be done.
GUI::Native
A non-core module that would use "native" GUI to create graphical
applications.
foreach(reverse ...)
Currently
foreach (reverse @_) { ... }
puts @_ on the stack, reverses it putting the reversed version on the
stack, then iterates forwards. Instead, it could be special-cased to
put @_ on the stack then iterate backwards.
Constant function cache
Approximate regular expression matching
Ongoing
These items always need doing:
Update guts documentation
Simon Cozens tries to do this when possible, and contributions to the
"perlapi" documentation is welcome.
Add more tests
Michael Schwern will donate $500 to Yet Another Society when all core
modules have tests.
Update auxiliary tools
The code we ship with Perl should look like good Perl 5.
Create debugging macros
Debugging macros (like printsv, dump) can make debugging perl inside a
C debugger much easier. A good set for gdb comes with mod_perl. Some-
thing similar should be distributed with perl.
The proper way to do this is to use and extend Devel::DebugInit.
Devel::DebugInit also needs to be extended to support threads.
See p5p archives for late May/early June 2001 for a recent discussion
on this topic.
truncate to the people
One can emulate ftruncate() using F_FREESP and F_CHSIZ fcntls (see the
UNIX FAQ for details). This needs to go somewhere near
pp_sys.c:pp_truncate().
One can emulate truncate() easily if one has ftruncate(). This emula-
tion should also go near pp_sys.pp_truncate().
Unicode in Filenames
chdir, chmod, chown, chroot, exec, glob, link, lstat, mkdir, open,
opendir, qx, readdir, readlink, rename, rmdir, stat, symlink, sysopen,
system, truncate, unlink, utime. All these could potentially accept
Unicode filenames either as input or output (and in the case of system
and qx Unicode in general, as input or output to/from the shell).
Whether a filesystem - an operating system pair understands Unicode in
filenames varies.
Known combinations that have some level of understanding include
Microsoft NTFS, Apple HFS+ (In Mac OS 9 and X) and Apple UFS (in Mac OS
X), NFS v4 is rumored to be Unicode, and of course Plan 9. How to cre-
ate Unicode filenames, what forms of Unicode are accepted and used
(UCS-2, UTF-16, UTF-8), what (if any) is the normalization form used,
and so on, varies. Finding the right level of interfacing to Perl
requires some thought. Remember that an OS does not implicate a
filesystem.
Note that in Windows the -C command line flag already does quite a bit
of the above (but even there the support is not complete: for example
the exec/spawn are not Unicode-aware) by turning on the so-called "wide
API support".
Recently done things
These are things which have been on the todo lists in previous releases
but have recently been completed.
Alternative RE syntax module
The "Regexp::English" module, available from the CPAN, provides this:
my $re = Regexp::English
-> start_of_line
-> literal('Flippers')
-> literal(':')
-> optional
-> whitespace_char
-> end
-> remember
-> multiple
-> digit;
/$re/;
Safe signal handling
A new signal model went into 5.7.1 without much fanfare. Operations and
"malloc"s are no longer interrupted by signals, which are handled
between opcodes. This means that "PERL_ASYNC_CHECK" now actually does
something. However, there are still a few things that need to be done.
Tie Modules
Modules which implement arrays in terms of strings, substrings or files
can be found on the CPAN.
gettimeofday
"Time::HiRes" has been integrated into the core.
setitimer and getimiter
Adding "Time::HiRes" got us this too.
Testing __DIE__ hook
Tests have been added.
CPP equivalent in Perl
A C Yardley will probably have done this by the time you can read this.
This allows for a generalization of the C constant detection used in
building "Errno.pm".
Explicit switch statements
"Switch.pm" has been integrated into the core to give you all manner of
"switch...case" semantics.
autocroak
This is "Fatal.pm".
UTF/EBCDIC
Nick Ing-Simmons has made UTF-EBCDIC (UTR13) work with Perl.
EBCDIC? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr16/
UTF Regexes
Although there are probably some small bugs to be rooted out, Jarkko
Hietaniemi has made regular expressions polymorphic between bytes and
characters.
perlcc to produce executable
"perlcc" was recently rewritten, and can now produce standalone exe-
cutables.
END blocks saved in compiled output
Secure temporary file module
Tim Jenness' "File::Temp" is now in core.
Integrate Time::HiRes
This module is now part of core.
Turn Cwd into XS
Benjamin Sugars has done this.
Mmap for input
Nick Ing-Simmons' "perlio" supports an "mmap" IO method.
Byte to/from UTF8 and UTF8 to/from local conversion
"Encode" provides this.
Add sockatmark support
Added in 5.7.1
Mailing list archives
http://lists.perl.org/ , http://archive.develooper.com/
Bug tracking
Richard Foley has written the bug tracking system at
http://bugs.perl.org/
Integrate MacPerl
Chris Nandor and Matthias Neeracher have integrated the MacPerl changes
into 5.6.0.
Web "nerve center" for Perl
http://use.perl.org/ is what you're looking for.
Regular expression tutorial
"perlretut", provided by Mark Kvale.
Debugging Tutorial
"perldebtut", written by Richard Foley.
Integrate new modules
Jarkko has been integrating madly into 5.7.x
Integrate profiler
"Devel::DProf" is now a core module.
Y2K error detection
There's a configure option to detect unsafe concatenation with "19",
and a CPAN module. ("D'oh::Year")
Regular expression debugger
While not part of core, Mark-Jason Dominus has written "Rx" and has
also come up with a generalised strategy for regular expression debug-
ging.
POD checker
That's, uh, podchecker
"Dynamic" lexicals
Cache precompiled modules
Deprecated Wishes
These are items which used to be in the todo file, but have been depre-
cated for some reason.
Loop control on do{}
This would break old code; use "do{{ }}" instead.
Lexically scoped typeglobs
Not needed now we have lexical IO handles.
format BOTTOM
report HANDLE
Damian Conway's text formatting modules seem to be the Way To Go.
Generalised want()/caller())
Robin Houston's "Want" module does this.
Named prototypes
This seems to be delayed until Perl 6.
Built-in globbing
The "File::Glob" module has been used to replace the "glob" function.
Regression tests for suidperl
"suidperl" is deprecated in favour of common sense.
Cached hash values
We have shared hash keys, which perform the same job.
Add compression modules
The compression modules are a little heavy; meanwhile, Nick Clark is
working on experimental pragmata to do transparent decompression on
input.
Reorganise documentation into tutorials/references
Could not get consensus on P5P about this.
Remove distinction between functions and operators
Caution: highly flammable.
Make XS easier to use
Use "Inline" instead, or SWIG.
Make embedding easier to use
Use "Inline::CPR".
man for perl
See the Perl Power Tools. ( http://language.perl.com/ppt/ )
my $Package::variable
Use "our" instead.
"or" tests defined, not truth
Suggesting this on P5P will cause a boring and interminable flamewar.
"class"-based lexicals
Use flyweight objects, secure hashes or, dare I say it, pseudo-hashes
instead. (Or whatever will replace pseudohashes in 5.10.)
byteperl
"ByteLoader" covers this.
Lazy evaluation / tail recursion removal
"List::Util" gives first() (a short-circuiting grep); tail recursion
removal is done manually, with "goto &whoami;". (However, MJD has found
that "goto &whoami" introduces a performance penalty, so maybe there
should be a way to do this after all: "sub foo {START: ... goto START;"
is better.)
Make "use utf8" the default
Because of backward compatibility this is difficult: scripts could not
contain any legacy eight-bit data (like Latin-1) anymore, even in
string literals or pod. Also would introduce a measurable slowdown of
at least few percentages since all regular expression operations would
be done in full UTF-8. But if you want to try this, add
-DUSE_UTF8_SCRIPTS to your compilation flags.
Unicode collation and normalization
The Unicode::Collate and Unicode::Normalize modules by SADAHIRO
Tomoyuki have been included since 5.8.0.
Collation? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr10/
Normalization? http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr15/
pack/unpack tutorial
Wolfgang Laun finished what Simon Cozens started.
perl v5.8.0 2002-06-08 PERLTODO(1)
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