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in reply to Re^2: HTML::Entities - encode all non-alphanumeric and foreign chars?
in thread HTML::Entities - encode all non-alphanumeric and foreign chars?

$encoded = encode_entities($input, '\\W'); # note double backslash

Single backslash works for me. Sure you weren't trying with a double-quoted string?

('\w', '\\w', "\\w" should all be the same string, \w — whereas "\w" is just w.)

Oh, and the same goes for \s. It should Just Work in a single-quoted string, but in a double-quoted string, you'll need to double the backslash.

print "Just another Perl ${\(trickster and hacker)},"
The Sidhekin proves Sidhe did it!

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Re^4: HTML::Entities - encode all non-alphanumeric and foreign chars?
by punch_card_don (Curate) on Sep 23, 2007 at 20:33 UTC
    Yes, absolutely right - double quotes. Replacing with single quotes makes '\W' work like a charm. Thanks.

    But, just to be finicky and difficult, '\W\s' is still converting spaces to &#32.

    UPDATE:

    Ya, of course it was. This is the list of UNSAFE characters to be encoded. So if I include '\W\s', that specificlaly tells it to encode spaces. What I want is '^\w\s' - anything that's not a word char or a space. Works perfect now.

    UPDATE 2

    OK, now this is very cool. With this formulation, I can create a very well defined list of what is and is not to be encoded. For example (what I'm using):

    $encoded = encode_entities($input'^\w\s.\-');
    encodes everything that is NOT a word char, or a space, or a period, or a dash (backslash needed to escape 'cause the dash is part of the module's syntax)