module Netconversion:sig
..end
Conversion between character encodings
Contents
A character set is a set of characters where every character is identified by a code point. An encoding is a way of representing characters from a set in byte strings. For example, the Unicode character set has more than 96000 characters, and the code points have values from 0 to 0x10ffff (not all code points are assigned yet). The UTF-8 encoding represents the code points by sequences of 1 to 4 bytes. There are also encodings that represent code points from several sets, e.g EUC-JP covers four sets.
Encodings are enumerated by the type encoding
, and names follow
the convention `Enc_*
, e.g. `Enc_utf8
.
Character sets are enumerated by the type
charset
, and names follow the convention `Set_*
, e.g.
`Set_unicode
.
This module deals mainly with encodings. It is important to know
that the same character set may have several encodings. For example,
the Unicode character set can be encoded as UTF-8 or UTF-16.
For the 8 bit character sets, however, there is usually only one
encoding, e.g `Set_iso88591
is always encoded as `Enc_iso88591
.
In a single-byte encoding every code point is represented by
one byte. This is what many programmers are accustomed at, and
what the OCaml language specially supports: A string
is
a sequence of char
s, where char
means an 8 bit quantity
interpreted as character. For example, the following piece of code allocates
a string
of four char
s, and assigns them individually:
let s = String.create 4 in
s.[0] <- 'G';
s.[1] <- 'e';
s.[2] <- 'r';
s.[3] <- 'd';
In a multi-byte encoding there are code points that are represented
by several bytes. As we still represent such text as string
, the
problem arises that a single char
, actually a byte, often represents
only a fraction of a full multi-byte character. There are two solutions:
string
.
This is, for example, the approach chosen by Camomile
, another OCaml
library dealing with Unicode. Instead, text is represented as
int array
. This way, the algorithms processing the text can
remain the same.n
th character of a text. One can, however, still
compose texts by just concatenating the strings representing
individual characters. Furthermore, it is possible to define
a cursor for a text that moves sequentially along the text.
The consequence is that programmers are restricted to sequential
algorithms. Note that the majority of text processing falls into
this class.The corresponding piece of code for Ocamlnet's Unicode implementation is:
let b = Buffer.create 80 in
Buffer.add b (ustring_of_uchar `Enc_utf8 71); (* 71 = code point of 'G' *)
Buffer.add b (ustring_of_uchar `Enc_utf8 101); (* 101 = code point of 'e' *)
Buffer.add b (ustring_of_uchar `Enc_utf8 114); (* 114 = code point of 'r' *)
Buffer.add b (ustring_of_uchar `Enc_utf8 100); (* 100 = code point of 'd' *)
let s = Buffer.contents b
It is important to always remember that a char
is no longer
a character but simply a byte. In many of the following explanations,
we strictly distinguish between byte positions or byte counts,
and character positions or character counts.
There a number of special effects that usually only occur in multi-byte encodings:
Malformed_code
when they find illegal bytes.Malformed_code
. When converting from
one encoding to another, it is also possible that the code point
is only unassigned in the target character set. This case is
usually handled by a substitution function subst
, and if no such
function is defined, by the exception Cannot_represent
.Malformed_code
.
However, when text is processed chunk by chunk, this phenomenon
may happen legally for all chunks but the last. For this reason,
some of the functions below handle this case specially.There is a special class of encodings known as ASCII-compatible. They are important because there are lots of programs and protocols that only interpret bytes from 0 to 127, and treat the bytes from 128 to 255 as data. These programs can process texts as long as the bytes from 0 to 127 are used as in ASCII. Fortunately, many encodings are ASCII-compatible, including UTF-8.
Netconversion
is centred around Unicode.
The conversion from one encoding to another works by finding the
Unicode code point of the character
to convert, and by representing the code point in the target encoding,
even if neither encodings have to do with Unicode.
Of course, this approach requires that all character sets handled
by Netconversion
are subsets of Unicode.
The supported range of Unicode code points: 0 to 0xd7ff, 0xe000 to 0xfffd,
0x10000 to 0x10ffff. All these code points can be represented in
UTF-8 and UTF-16. Netconversion
does not know which of the code
points are assigned and which not, and because of this, it simply
allows all code points of the mentioned ranges (but for other character
sets, the necessary lookup tables exist).
UTF-8: The UTF-8 representation can have one to four bytes. Malformed
byte sequences are always rejected, even those that want to cheat the
reader like "0xc0 0x80" for the code point 0. There is special support
for the Java variant of UTF-8 (`Enc_java
). `Enc_utf8
strings must not
have a byte order mark (it would be interpreted as "zero-width space"
character). However, the Unicode standard allows byte order marks
at the very beginning of texts; use `Enc_utf8_opt_bom
in this case.
UTF-16: When reading from a string encoded as `Enc_utf16
, a byte
order mark is expected at the beginning. The detected variant
(`Enc_utf16_le
or `Enc_utf16_be
) is usually returned by the parsing
function. The byte order mark is not included into the output string. -
Some functions of this
module cannot cope with `Enc_utf16
(i.e. UTF-16 without endianess
annotation), and will fail.
Once the endianess is determined, the code point 0xfeff is no longer interpreted as byte order mark, but as "zero-width non-breakable space".
Some code points are represented by pairs of 16 bit values, these are the so-called "surrogate pairs". They can only occur in UTF-16.
UTF-32: This is very much the same as for UTF-16. There is a little
endian version `Enc_utf32_le
and a big endian version `Enc_utf32_be
.
The non-Unicode character sets are subsets of Unicode. Here, it may happen that a Unicode code point does not have a corresponding code point. In this case, certain rules are applied to handle this (see below). It is, however, ensured that every non-Unicode code point has a corresponding Unicode code point. (In other words, character sets cannot be supported for which this property does not hold.)
It is even possible to create further subsets artificially. The
encoding `Enc_subset(e,def)
means to derive a new encoding from
the existing one e
, but to only accept the code points for which
the definition function def
yields the value true
. For example,
the encoding
`Enc_subset(`Enc_usascii,
fun i -> i <> 34 && i <> 38 && i <> 60 && i <> 62)
is ASCII without the bracket angles, the quotation mark, and the ampersand character, i.e. the subset of ASCII that can be included in HTML text without escaping.
If a code point is not defined by the encoding but found in a text,
the reader will raise the exception Malformed_code
. When text is
output, however, the subst
function will be called for undefined code
points (which raises Cannot_represent
by default). The subst
function is an optional argument of many conversion functions that
allows it to insert a substitution text for undefined code points.
Note, however, that the substitution text is restricted to at most
50 characters (because unlimited length would lead to difficult
problems we would like to avoid).
Many encodings require lookup tables. The following encodings are built-in and always supported:
`Enc_utf8
, `Enc_java
, `Enc_utf16
, `Enc_utf16_le
,
`Enc_utf16_be
, `Enc_utf32
, `Enc_utf32_le
, `Enc_utf32_be
`Enc_usascii
, `Enc_iso88591
, `Enc_empty
The lookup tables for the other encodings are usually loaded at
runtime, but it is also possible to embed them in the generated
binary executable. See Netunidata
for details. The functions
available_input_encodings
and available_output_encodings
can
be invoked to find out which encodings can be loaded, or are available
otherwise.
I took the mappings from www.unicode.org
, and the standard names of
the character sets from IANA. Obviously, many character sets are missing
that can be supported; especially ISO646 character sets, and many EBCDIC
code pages. Stateful encodings like generic ISO-2022 have been omitted
(stateless subsets of ISO-2022 like EUC can be supported, however;
currently we support EUC-JP and EUC-KR).
Because of the copyright statement from Unicode, I cannot put the
source tables that describe the mappings into the distribution. They
are publicly available from www.unicode.org
.
Naming conventions:
As it is possible to refer to substrings by either giving a byte offset or by counting whole characters, these naming conventions are helpful:
range_pos
and range_len
refer to byte positions of
characters, or substringscount
refer to positions given as the number of characters
relative to an originFurthermore:
uchar
is a single Unicode code point represented as intustring
is a string of encoded charactersuarray
is an array of int
representing a stringexception Malformed_code
Raised when an illegal byte sequence is found
exception Cannot_represent of int
Raised when a certain Unicode code point cannot be represented in the selected output encoding
typeencoding =
[ `Enc_adobe_standard_encoding
| `Enc_adobe_symbol_encoding
| `Enc_adobe_zapf_dingbats_encoding
| `Enc_asn1_T61
| `Enc_asn1_iso646
| `Enc_asn1_printable
| `Enc_cp037
| `Enc_cp1006
| `Enc_cp1026
| `Enc_cp1047
| `Enc_cp424
| `Enc_cp437
| `Enc_cp500
| `Enc_cp737
| `Enc_cp775
| `Enc_cp850
| `Enc_cp852
| `Enc_cp855
| `Enc_cp856
| `Enc_cp857
| `Enc_cp860
| `Enc_cp861
| `Enc_cp862
| `Enc_cp863
| `Enc_cp864
| `Enc_cp865
| `Enc_cp866
| `Enc_cp869
| `Enc_cp874
| `Enc_cp875
| `Enc_empty
| `Enc_eucjp
| `Enc_euckr
| `Enc_iso88591
| `Enc_iso885910
| `Enc_iso885911
| `Enc_iso885913
| `Enc_iso885914
| `Enc_iso885915
| `Enc_iso885916
| `Enc_iso88592
| `Enc_iso88593
| `Enc_iso88594
| `Enc_iso88595
| `Enc_iso88596
| `Enc_iso88597
| `Enc_iso88598
| `Enc_iso88599
| `Enc_java
| `Enc_jis0201
| `Enc_koi8r
| `Enc_macroman
| `Enc_subset of encoding * (int -> bool)
| `Enc_usascii
| `Enc_utf16
| `Enc_utf16_be
| `Enc_utf16_le
| `Enc_utf32
| `Enc_utf32_be
| `Enc_utf32_le
| `Enc_utf8
| `Enc_utf8_opt_bom
| `Enc_windows1250
| `Enc_windows1251
| `Enc_windows1252
| `Enc_windows1253
| `Enc_windows1254
| `Enc_windows1255
| `Enc_windows1256
| `Enc_windows1257
| `Enc_windows1258 ]
The polymorphic variant enumerating the supported encodings. We have:
`Enc_utf8
: UTF-8`Enc_utf8_opt_bom
: UTF-8 with an optional byte order mark at the
beginning of the text`Enc_java
: The UTF-8 variant used by Java (the only difference is
the representation of NUL)`Enc_utf16
: UTF-16 with unspecified endianess (restricted)`Enc_utf16_le
: UTF-16 little endian`Enc_utf16_be
: UTF-16 big endian`Enc_utf32
: UTF-32 with unspecified endianess (restricted)`Enc_utf32_le
: UTF-32 little endian`Enc_utf32_be
: UTF-32 big endian`Enc_usascii
: US-ASCII (7 bits)`Enc_iso8859
n: ISO-8859-n`Enc_koi8r
: KOI8-R`Enc_jis0201
: JIS-X-0201 (Roman and Katakana)`Enc_eucjp
: EUC-JP (code points from US-ASCII, JIS-X-0202, -0208, and
-0212)`Enc_euckr
: EUC-KR (code points from US-ASCII, KS-X-1001)`Enc_windows
n: WINDOWS-n`Enc_cp
n: IBM code page n. Note that there are both ASCII-
and EBCDIC-based code pages`Enc_adobe_*
: Adobe-specific encodings, e.g. used in Adobe fonts`Enc_mac*
: Macintosh-specific encodings`Enc_subset(e,def)
: The subset of e
by applying the definition
function def
`Enc_empty
: The empty encoding (does not represent any character)typecharset =
[ `Set_adobe_standard_encoding
| `Set_adobe_symbol_encoding
| `Set_adobe_zapf_dingbats_encoding
| `Set_asn1_T61
| `Set_asn1_iso646
| `Set_asn1_printable
| `Set_cp037
| `Set_cp1006
| `Set_cp1026
| `Set_cp1047
| `Set_cp424
| `Set_cp437
| `Set_cp500
| `Set_cp737
| `Set_cp775
| `Set_cp850
| `Set_cp852
| `Set_cp855
| `Set_cp856
| `Set_cp857
| `Set_cp860
| `Set_cp861
| `Set_cp862
| `Set_cp863
| `Set_cp864
| `Set_cp865
| `Set_cp866
| `Set_cp869
| `Set_cp874
| `Set_cp875
| `Set_iso88591
| `Set_iso885910
| `Set_iso885911
| `Set_iso885913
| `Set_iso885914
| `Set_iso885915
| `Set_iso885916
| `Set_iso88592
| `Set_iso88593
| `Set_iso88594
| `Set_iso88595
| `Set_iso88596
| `Set_iso88597
| `Set_iso88598
| `Set_iso88599
| `Set_jis0201
| `Set_jis0208
| `Set_jis0212
| `Set_koi8r
| `Set_ks1001
| `Set_macroman
| `Set_unicode
| `Set_usascii
| `Set_windows1250
| `Set_windows1251
| `Set_windows1252
| `Set_windows1253
| `Set_windows1254
| `Set_windows1255
| `Set_windows1256
| `Set_windows1257
| `Set_windows1258 ]
A charset
is simply a set of code points. It does not say how
the code points are encoded as bytes. Every encoding implies a certain
charset (or several charsets) that can be encoded, but the reverse is
not true.
Pre-evaluation of the encoding argument:
A number of the following functions can be made run faster if they are
called several times for the same encoding. In this case, it is recommended
to apply the function once partially with the encoding argument, and to
call the resulting closure instead. For example, ustring_of_uchar
supports
this technique:
let my_ustring_of_uchar = ustring_of_uchar my_enc in
let s1 = my_ustring_of_uchar u1 ...
let s2 = my_ustring_of_uchar u2 ...
This is much faster than
let s1 = ustring_of_uchar my_enc u1 ...
let s2 = ustring_of_uchar my_enc u2 ...
The availability of this optimization is indicated by the predicate PRE_EVAL(arg) where arg identifies the encoding argument.
Inlining
When a function can be inlined across module/library boundaries, this is indicated by the predicate INLINED. Of course, this works only for the ocamlopt compiler.
val encoding_of_string : string -> encoding
Returns the encoding of the name of the encoding. Fails if the
encoding is unknown.
E.g. encoding_of_string "iso-8859-1" = `Enc_iso88591
Punctuation characters (e.g. "-") and year suffixes (e.g. ":1991") are ignored.
val string_of_encoding : encoding -> string
Returns the name of the encoding.
val is_ascii_compatible : encoding -> bool
"ASCII compatible" means: The bytes 1 to 127 represent the ASCII codes 1 to 127, and no other representation of a character contains the bytes 1 to 127.
For example, ISO-8859-1 is ASCII-compatible because the byte 1 to 127 mean the same as in ASCII, and all other characters use bytes greater than 127. UTF-8 is ASCII-compatible for the same reasons, it does not matter that there are multi-byte characters. EBCDIC is not ASCII-compatible because the bytes 1 to 127 do not mean the same as in ASCII. UTF-16 is not ASCII-compatible because the bytes 1 to 127 can occur in multi-byte representations of non-ASCII characters.
The byte 0 has been excluded from this definition because the C language uses it with a special meaning that has nothing to do with characters, so it is questionable to interpret the byte 0 anyway.
val is_single_byte : encoding -> bool
Returns whether the encoding is a single-byte encoding
val same_encoding : encoding -> encoding -> bool
Whether both encodings are the same. `Enc_subset
encodings are only
considered as equal when the definition functions are physically the same.
Warning: Don't use ( = ) to compare encodings because this may fail.
val byte_order_mark : encoding -> string
Returns the byte order mark that must occur at the beginning of files to indicate whether "little endian" or "big endian" is used. If this does not apply to the encoding, an empty string is returned.
See also the section about "Byte Order Marks" below.
val makechar : encoding -> int -> string
ustring_of_uchar
instead.makechar enc i:
Creates the string representing the Unicode code point i
in encoding
enc
. Raises Not_found
if the character is legal but cannot be
represented in enc
.
Possible encodings: everything but `Enc_utf16
and `Enc_utf32
Evaluation hints:
val ustring_of_uchar : encoding -> int -> string
ustring_of_uchar enc i
:
Creates the string representing the Unicode code point i
in encoding
enc
. Raises Cannot_represent i
if the character is legal but cannot be
represented in enc
.
Possible encodings: everything but `Enc_utf16
and `Enc_utf32
.
Evaluation hints:
val to_unicode : charset -> int -> int
Maps the code point of the charset to the corresponding
Unicode code point, or raises Malformed_code
, when the
input number does not correspond to a code point.
Note `Set_jis0208
and `Set_jis0212
: Code points are usually
given by a row and column number. The numeric code point returned by
this function is computed by multiplying the row number (1..94) with 96,
and by adding the column number (1..94), i.e. row*96+column.
Evaluation hints:
val from_unicode : charset -> int -> int
Maps the Unicode code point to the corresponding code point of
the charset, or raises Cannot_represent
when there is no such
corresponding code point.
Note `Set_jis0208
and `Set_jis0212
: Code points are usually
given by a row and column number. The numeric code point returned by
this function is computed by multiplying the row number (1..94) with 96,
and by adding the column number (1..94), i.e. row*96+column.
Evaluation hints:
val available_input_encodings : unit -> encoding list
Returns the list of all available encodings that can be used for
input strings. The list reflects the set of loadable/linked Netmapping
modules.
val available_output_encodings : unit -> encoding list
Returns the list of all available encodings that can be used for
output strings. The list reflects the set of loadable/linked Netmapping
modules.
val user_encoding : unit -> encoding option
Determines the preferred user encoding:
If an error occurs while determining the result, the value
None
is returned.
val win32_code_pages : (int * encoding) list
Mapping between Win32 code page numbers and Ocamlnet encodings. This is incomplete. The official list: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd317756%28v=VS.85%29.aspx
In order to convert a string from one encoding to another, call
convert
like in
let s_utf8 =
convert ~in_enc:`Enc_iso88591 ~out_enc:`Enc_utf8 s_latin1
which converts the ISO-8859-1 string s_latin1
to the UTF-8 string
s_utf8
.
It is also possible to convert while reading from or writing to a file.
This use case is effectively handled by the class
Netconversion.conversion_pipe
.
See the explanations of this class for examples.
val convert : ?subst:(int -> string) ->
in_enc:encoding ->
out_enc:encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> string
Converts the string from in_enc
to out_enc
, and returns it.
The string must consist of a whole number of characters. If it
ends with an incomplete multi-byte character, however, this is
detected, and the exception Malformed_code
will be raised.
This exception is also raised for other encoding errors in the
input string.
subst
: This function is invoked for code points of in_enc
that
cannot be represented in out_enc
, and the result of the function
invocation is substituted (directly, without any further conversion).
Restriction: The string returned by subst
must not be longer than 50
bytes.
If subst
is missing, Cannot_represent
is raised in this case.range_pos
: Selects a substring for conversion. range_pos
is the byte position of the first character of the substring.
(Default: 0)range_len
: Selects a substring for conversion. range_len
is the length of the substring in bytes (Default: Length
of the input string minus range_pos
)val convert_tstring : ?subst:(int -> string) ->
in_enc:encoding ->
out_enc:encoding ->
out_kind:'s Netstring_tstring.tstring_kind ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> 's
Same for tagged strings
val convert_poly : in_ops:'s1 Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
out_kind:'s2 Netstring_tstring.tstring_kind ->
?subst:(int -> string) ->
in_enc:encoding ->
out_enc:encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's1 -> 's2
Polymorphic version
val recode : in_enc:encoding ->
in_buf:string ->
in_pos:int ->
in_len:int ->
out_enc:encoding ->
out_buf:Stdlib.Bytes.t ->
out_pos:int ->
out_len:int ->
max_chars:int -> subst:(int -> string) -> int * int * encoding
Converts the character sequence contained in the at most in_len
bytes
of in_buf
starting at byte position in_pos
, and writes the result
into at most out_len
bytes of out_buf
starting at byte position
out_pos
. At most max_chars
characters are converted from
in_buf
to out_buf
.
The characters in in_buf
are assumed to be encoded as in_enc
, and the
characters in out_buf
will be encoded as out_enc
. The case
in_enc = out_enc
is not handled specially, and is carried out as
fast as any other conversion.
If there is a code point which cannot be represented in out_enc
,
the function subst
is called with the code point as argument, and the
resulting string (which must already be encoded as out_enc
) is
inserted instead.
It is possible that subst
is called several times for the same
character. Restriction: The string returned by subst must not be longer
than 50 bytes.
It is allowed that the input buffer ends with an incomplete multi-byte character. This character is not converted, i.e. the conversion ends just before this character. This special condition is not indicated to the caller.
(in_n, out_n, in_enc')
is returned:in_n
is the actual number of bytes that have been converted from
in_buf
; in_n
may be smaller than in_len
because of incomplete
multi-byte characters, or because the output buffer has less space
for characters than the input buffer, or because of a change
of the encoding variant.out_n
is the actual number of bytes written into out_buf
.in_enc'
is normally identical to in_enc
. However, there are cases
where the encoding can be refined when looking at the byte
sequence; for example whether a little endian or big endian variant
of the encoding is used. in_enc'
is the variant of in_enc
that was
used for the last converted character.in_buf
, and at least
space for one complete character in out_buf
, and max_chars >= 1
, it is
guaranteed that in_n > 0 && out_n > 0
.val recode_tstring : in_enc:encoding ->
in_buf:Netsys_types.tstring ->
in_pos:int ->
in_len:int ->
out_enc:encoding ->
out_buf:Stdlib.Bytes.t ->
out_pos:int ->
out_len:int ->
max_chars:int -> subst:(int -> string) -> int * int * encoding
A version of recode
for tagged strings
val recode_poly : in_ops:'s Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
in_enc:encoding ->
in_buf:'s ->
in_pos:int ->
in_len:int ->
out_enc:encoding ->
out_buf:Stdlib.Bytes.t ->
out_pos:int ->
out_len:int ->
max_chars:int -> subst:(int -> string) -> int * int * encoding
A polymorphic version of recode
class conversion_pipe :?subst:int -> string -> in_enc:encoding -> out_enc:encoding -> unit ->
Netchannels.io_obj_channel
This pipeline class (see Netchannels
for more information) can be used
to recode a netchannel while reading or writing.
A cursor is a reference to a character in an encoded string. The properties of the current character can be obtained, and the cursor can be moved relative to its current position.
For example, the following loop outputs the Unicode code points
of all characters of the UTF-8 input string s
:
let cs = create_cursor `Enc_utf8 s in
while not (cursor_at_end cs) do
let n = cursor_char_count cs in
let ch = uchar_at cs in
printf "At position %d: %d\n" n ch;
move cs;
done
For a more exact definition, cursors are modeled as follows: The reference to the encoded string is contained in the cursor. This can be a complete string, or an arbitrary substring (denoted by a range of valid byte positions). The cursor position can be initially set to an arbitrary byte position of the encoded string.
Cursor positions can be denoted by
p
in the encoded string, or byn
relative to the initial position.Valid cursor positions are:
n=0
: This is always the initial cursor positionn>0
: Positive char counts refer to characters right to the initial
character. The rightmost position is the position n_max
past the
rightmost character. The rightmost position does not have a
code point.n<0
: Negative char counts refer to characters left to the initial
character. The leftmost position is the position n_min
of the
leftmost character.For the empty string we have n_min = n_max = 0
, complementing the
above definition.
Cursors are moved to the left or right of their current position
by a whole number of characters. When it is tried to move them
past the leftmost or rightmost position, the cursor is placed to the
leftmost or rightmost position, respectively, and the exception
Cursor_out_of_range
is raised.
There are two cases of illegal encodings:
Partial_character
is raised when the code point of this character
is read. Note that this can only happen at position n_max-1
. It
is allowed to move beyond this character to n_max
.Malformed_code
is
raised.It is undefined what happens when the encoded string is modified while a cursor is in use referring to it.
type 's
poly_cursor
A cursor denotes a character position in an encoded string.
The parameter 's
is the string type, e.g. string
or bytes
.
typecursor =
string poly_cursor
exception End_of_string
Raised when it is tried to access the character after the end of the
string (at position n_max
)
exception Cursor_out_of_range
Raised when it is tried to move the cursor beyond the beginning of the string or beyond the end of the string. In the latter case, it is legal to move the cursor to the position following the last character, but it is not possible to move it further.
exception Partial_character
Raised when the last character of the string is an incomplete
multi-byte character, and it is tried to get the code point
(using uchar_at
).
exception Byte_order_mark
Raised when it is tried to get the code point of the BOM at the beginning of the string
val create_cursor : ?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int ->
?initial_rel_pos:int ->
encoding -> string -> cursor
Creates a new cursor for the passed string and the passed encoding. By default, the allowed range of the cursor is the whole string, and the cursor is intially positioned at the beginning of the string. The range is the part of the string the cursor can move within.
Special behaviour for `Enc_utf16
/`Enc_utf32
: UTF with unspecified
endianess is handled specially. First, this encoding is only
accepted when initial_rel_pos=0
. Second, the first two bytes
must be a byte order mark (BOM) (if the string has a length of two
bytes or more). The BOM counts as character without code point.
The function uchar_at
raises the exception Byte_order_mark
when the BOM is accessed. Third, when the cursor is moved to the
next character, the encoding as returned by cursor_encoding
is
changed to either `Enc_utf16_le
or `Enc_utf16_be
according
to the BOM. The encoding changes back to `Enc_utf16
when the
cursor is moved back to the initial position.
Special behavior for `Enc_utf8_opt_bom
: Here, a byte order mark
at the beginning of the text is recognized, and uchar_at
will
raise Byte_order_mark
. Unlike in the UTF-16 and 32 cases, the BOM
is optional. The function cursor_encoding
returns `Enc_utf8
if the cursor is moved away from the BOM, and changes back to
`Enc_utf8_opt_bom
if moved back to the first character.
range_pos
: Restricts the range of the cursor to a substring.
The argument range_pos
is the byte position of the beginning
of the range. (Defaults to 0)range_len
: Restricts the range of the cursor to a substring.
The argument range_len
is the length of the range.
(Default: Length of the input string minus range_pos
)initial_rel_pos
: The initial position of the cursor, given
as bytes relative to range_pos
. The character at this position
is considered as the zeroth character of the string (as reported
by cursor_char_count
)val create_poly_cursor : ?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int ->
?initial_rel_pos:int ->
encoding ->
's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops -> 's -> 's poly_cursor
Polymorphic version
type 'a
with_cursor_fun = {
|
with_cursor_fun : |
Helper type for Netconversion.with_tstring_cursor
val with_tstring_cursor : ?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int ->
?initial_rel_pos:int ->
encoding ->
Netsys_types.tstring -> 'a with_cursor_fun -> 'a
Creates a cursor like create_cursor
and calls with_cursor_fun
with the cursor, returning any result unchanged.
Note that there cannot be a "create_tstring_cursor" for typing reasons, and this is the closest approximation.
val reinit_cursor : ?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int ->
?initial_rel_pos:int ->
?enc:encoding -> 's -> 's poly_cursor -> unit
Reuses an existing cursor for a new purpose. The arguments are
as in create_cursor
.
val copy_cursor : ?enc:encoding ->
's poly_cursor -> 's poly_cursor
Copies the cursor. The copy can be moved independently of the original cursor, but is applied to the same string. The copy starts at the byte position of the string where the original cursor is currently positioned.
enc
: Optionally, the assumed
encoding can be changed to a different one by passing enc
.val cursor_target : 's poly_cursor -> 's
Returns the string of the cursor
Evaluation hints:
val cursor_range : 'a poly_cursor -> int * int
Returns the valid range of the cursor as pair (range_pos, range_len)
Evaluation hints:
val cursor_initial_rel_pos : 'a poly_cursor -> int
Returns the initial relative byte position of the cursor
Evaluation hints:
val cursor_char_count : 'a poly_cursor -> int
Returns the character count of the cursor. The initial position
(when create_cursor
was called) has the number 0, positions to the
right denote positive numbers, and positions to the left negative numbers.
Evaluation hints:
val cursor_pos : 'a poly_cursor -> int
Returns the byte position of the cursor, i.e. the byte index of
the string that corresponds to the cursor position. The function
returns the absolute position (i.e. NOT relative to cursor_range
).
Evaluation hints:
val uchar_at : 'a poly_cursor -> int
Returns the Unicode code point of the character at the cursor.
Raises End_of_string
if the cursor is positioned past the last
character.
Raises Partial_character
if the last character of the analysed
string range is an incomplete multi-byte character.
Raises Byte_order_mark
if the first character of the string
is a BOM (when the encoding has BOMs).
Evaluation hints:
val cursor_byte_length : 'a poly_cursor -> int
Returns the byte length of the representation of the character at the
cursor. This works also for incomplete multi-byte characters and
BOMs.
Raises End_of_string
if the cursor is positioned past the last
character.
Evaluation hints:
val cursor_at_end : 'a poly_cursor -> bool
Returns whether the cursor is positioned past the last character.
Evaluation hints:
val move : ?num:int -> 'a poly_cursor -> unit
Moves the cursor one character to the right, or if num
is passed,
this number of characters to the right. num
can be negative in
which case the cursor is moved to the left.
If the cursor were placed outside the valid range, the cursor
would go into an illegal state, and because of this, this is
handled as follows: the cursor moves to the
leftmost or rightmost position (depending on the direction),
and the exception Cursor_out_of_range
is raised.
val cursor_encoding : 'a poly_cursor -> encoding
Returns the encoding of the cursor. For some encodings, the
returned encoding depends on the position of the cursor (see
the note about UTF-8 in create_cursor
)
Evaluation hints:
val cursor_blit : 'a poly_cursor -> int array -> int -> int -> int
cursor_blit cs ua pos len
: Copies at most len
characters as code
points from
the cursor position and the following positions to the array ua
at index pos
. The number of copied characters is returned.
If the cursor is already at the end of the string when this
function is called, the exception End_of_string
will be raised instead,
and no characters are copied. The cursor positions containing byte
order marks and partial characters are never copied; this is ensured
by stopping the copying procedure just before these positions. This
may even make the function return the number 0.
The function tries to copy as many characters as currently available
in the already decoded part of the string the cursor is attached to.
In the current implementation, this number is not higher than 250.
You can call cursor_blit_maxlen
to get an upper limit.
The function does not move the cursor.
val cursor_blit_maxlen : 'a poly_cursor -> int
Returns the maximum number of characters cursor_blit
can copy
at the current cursor position. This is the number of characters
cursor_blit
would copy if the len
argument were arbitrarily
large.
Note that the value depends on the cursor position and on the contents of the cursor string.
This function raises End_of_string
if the cursor is positioned
at the end of the string.
val cursor_blit_positions : 'a poly_cursor -> int array -> int -> int -> int
Works like cursor_blit
, but copies the byte positions of the
characters into ua
instead of the code points.
When called directly after cursor_blit
for the same cursor and
with the same value of len
, this function copies as many characters
and thus returns the same number:
let n1 = cursor_blit cs ua ua_pos len in
let n2 = cursor_blit_pos cs pa pa_pos len in
assert (n1 = n2)
Because UTF-16 allows both little and big endian, files and other permanent representations of UTF-16 text are usually prepended by a byte order mark (BOM). There is confusion about the BOM among Unicode users, so the following explanations may be helpful.
Of course, the BOM is only used for external representations like files, as the endianess is always known for in-memory representations by the running program. This module has six encoding identifiers:
`Enc_utf16
: UTF-16 where the endianess is unknown`Enc_utf16_le
: UTF-16 little endian`Enc_utf16_be
: UTF-16 big endian`Enc_utf32
: UTF-32 where the endianess is unknown`Enc_utf32_le
: UTF-32 little endian`Enc_utf32_be
: UTF-32 big endianWhen a file is read, the endianess is unknown at the beginning.
This is expressed by e.g. `Enc_utf16
. When the BOM is read, the encoding
is refined to either `Enc_utf16_le
or `Enc_utf16_be
, whatever
the BOM says. This works as follows: The BOM is the representation
of the code point 0xfeff as little or big endian, i.e. as byte sequences
"0xfe 0xff" (big endian) or "0xff 0xfe" (little endian). As the "wrong"
code point 0xfffe is intentionally unused, the reader can determine
the endianess.
There is one problem, though. Unfortunately, the code point 0xfeff is also used for the normal "zero width non-breakable space" character. When this code point occurs later in the text, it is interpreted as this character. Of course, this means that one must know whether there is a BOM at the beginning, and if not, one must know the endianess. One cannot program in the style "well, let's see what is coming and guess".
Unicode also allows a BOM for UTF-8 although it is meaningless to specify
the endianess. If you create the cursor with the encoding `Enc_utf8
nothing is done about this, and you get the BOM as normal character.
If you create the cursor with `Enc_utf8_opt_bom
, the BOM is treated
specially like in the UTF-16 and -32 cases
(with the only difference that it is optional for UTF-8).
The functions of this module can all deal with BOMs when reading
encoded text. In most cases, the BOM is hidden from the caller,
and just handled automatically. Cursors, however, treat BOMs as special
characters outside of the code set
(exception Byte_order_mark
is raised).
The writing functions of this module do not generate BOMs,
however, as there is no way to tell them that a BOM is needed. The
function byte_order_mark
can be used to output the BOM manually.
Create the cursor:
let cs = create_cursor `Enc_utf8 "B\195\164r";;
The cursor is now positioned at the 'B':
uchar_at cs
returns 66
(i.e. B)
Move the cursor one character to the right. In UTF-8, this is a two-byte character consisting of the bytes 195 and 164:
move cs ;;
uchar_at cs
returns 228
(i.e. a-Umlaut)
One can easily move the cursor to the end of the string:
move ~num:max_int cs ;;
This raises Cursor_out_of_range
, but places the cursor at the end.
This is the position past the last letter 'r':
uchar_at cs
raises End_of_string
Go one character to the left:
move ~num:(-1) cs ;;
uchar_at cs
returns 114
(i.e. r)
Cursors can only move relative to their current position. Of course, one can easily write a function that moves to an absolute position, like
let move_abs n cs =
let delta = n - cursor_pos cs in
move ~num:delta cs
However, this operation is expensive (O(string length)), and should be avoided for efficient algorithms. Cursors are not arrays, and an algorithm should only be based on cursors when it is possible to iterate over the characters of the string one after another.
val ustring_length : encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> int
Returns the length of the string in characters. The function fails
when illegal byte sequences or incomplete characters are found in the
string with Malformed_code
.
Evaluation hints:
range_pos
: The byte position of the substring to measure
(default: 0)range_len
: The byte length of the substring to measure
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
)val ustring_length_ts : encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> int
Same for tagged strings
val ustring_length_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> int
Polymorphic version
val ustring_iter : encoding ->
(int -> unit) -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> unit
Iterates over the characters of a string, and calls the passed function
for every code point. The function raises Malformed_code
when
illegal byte sequences or incomplete characters are found.
range_pos
: The byte position of the substring to iterate over
(default: 0)range_len
: The byte length of the substring to iterate over
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
)val ustring_iter_ts : encoding ->
(int -> unit) ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> unit
Same for tagged strings
val ustring_iter_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
encoding ->
(int -> unit) -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> unit
Polymorphic version
val ustring_map : encoding ->
(int -> int list) -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> string
Maps every character of a string to a list of characters, and returns
the concatenated string.
The encoding
argument determines the encoding of both the argument
and the result string.
The map function gets every character as its Unicode code point, and
must return the list of code points to map to.
The function raises Malformed_code
when
illegal byte sequences or incomplete characters are found.
range_pos
: The byte position of the substring to map
(default: 0)range_len
: The byte length of the substring to map
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
)val ustring_map_ts : encoding ->
(int -> int list) ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> Netsys_types.tstring
Same for tagged strings. The output representation is the same as for the input
val ustring_map_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
't Netstring_tstring.tstring_kind ->
encoding ->
(int -> int list) -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> 't
Polymorphic version
val ustring_to_lower : encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> string
Converts the input string to lowercase.
The encoding
, range_pos
, and range_len
arguments work
as for ustring_map
. The exception Malformed_code
is raised
when illegal byte sequences are found.
val ustring_to_lower_ts : encoding ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> Netsys_types.tstring
Same for tagged strings. The output representation is the same as for the input
val ustring_to_lower_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
't Netstring_tstring.tstring_kind ->
encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> 't
Polymorphic version
val ustring_to_upper : encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> string
Converts the input string to uppercase.
The encoding
, range_pos
, and range_len
arguments work
as for ustring_map
. The exception Malformed_code
is raised
when illegal byte sequences are found.
val ustring_to_upper_ts : encoding ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> Netsys_types.tstring
Same for tagged strings. The output representation is the same as for the input
val ustring_to_upper_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
't Netstring_tstring.tstring_kind ->
encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> 't
Polymorphic version
val ustring_to_title : encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> string
Converts the input string to titlecase.
The encoding
, range_pos
, and range_len
arguments work
as for ustring_map
. The exception Malformed_code
is raised
when illegal byte sequences are found.
val ustring_to_title_ts : encoding ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> Netsys_types.tstring
Same for tagged strings. The output representation is the same as for the input
val ustring_to_title_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
't Netstring_tstring.tstring_kind ->
encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> 't
Polymorphic version
val ustring_sub : encoding ->
int -> int -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> string
ustring_sub enc start length s
: Returns the substring of s
starting
at character count start
and consisting of length
characters. Note
that start
and length
select the substring by multiples of
(usually multibyte) characters, not bytes.
If the optional byte-based range_pos
and range_len
arguments are
present, these arguments are taken to determine a first substring
before start
and length
are applied to extract the final
substring.
The function raises Malformed_code
when
illegal byte sequences or incomplete characters are found.
range_pos
: The byte position of the substring to extract
(default: 0)range_len
: The byte length of the substring to extract
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
)val ustring_sub_ts : encoding ->
int ->
int ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> Netsys_types.tstring
Same for tagged strings. The output representation is the same as for the input
val ustring_sub_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
't Netstring_tstring.tstring_kind ->
encoding ->
int -> int -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> 't
Polymorphic version
val ustring_compare : encoding ->
(int -> int -> int) ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int -> string -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> int
Compares two strings lexicographically. The first argument is the encoding of both strings (which must be the same). The second argument is the function that compares two Unicode code points. It must return 0 if both characters are the same, a negative value if the first character is the smaller one, and a positive value if the second character is the smaller one.
The function raises Malformed_code
when
illegal byte sequences or incomplete characters are found.
range_pos
: The byte position of the substring to compare
(default: 0), referring to the following string argumentrange_len
: The byte length of the substring to compare
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
),
referring to the following string argumentrange_pos
: The byte position of the substring to compare
(default: 0), referring to the following string argumentrange_len
: The byte length of the substring to compare
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
),
referring to the following string argumentval ustring_compare_ts : encoding ->
(int -> int -> int) ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int ->
Netsys_types.tstring ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> int
Same for tagged strings
val ustring_compare_poly : 's1 Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
's2 Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
encoding ->
(int -> int -> int) ->
?range_pos:int ->
?range_len:int -> 's1 -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's2 -> int
Polymorphic version
val code_cmp : int -> int -> int
A compare function for ustring_compare
: Normal string comparison:
This function compares by code point
val ci_code_cmp : int -> int -> int
A compare function for ustring_compare
: Case-insensitive comparison:
This function compares by the lowercase code point if it exists,
and the untransformed code point otherwise.
NB. This bases on the lowercase transformation that maps one char to only one char, and not to many.
val uarray_of_ustring : encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> int array
Returns the characters of the string as array of Unicode code points.
range_pos
: The byte position of the substring to extract
(default: 0)range_len
: The byte length of the substring to extract
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
)val uarray_of_ustring_ts : encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> int array
Same for tagged strings
val uarray_of_ustring_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> int array
Polymorphic version
val ustring_of_uarray : ?subst:(int -> string) ->
encoding -> ?pos:int -> ?len:int -> int array -> string
Returns the array of Unicode code points as encoded string.
subst
: This function is called when a code point cannot be represented
in the chosen character encoding. It must returns the (already encoded)
string to substitute for this code point. By default
(if ~subst is not passed), the exception Cannot_represent
will be raised in this case.pos
: Selects a subarray: pos
is the first array position
to encode (default: 0)len
: Selects a subarray: len
is the length of the subarray
to encode (default: array length minus pos
)exception Malformed_code_at of int
An illegal byte sequence is found at this byte position
val verify : encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> string -> unit
Checks whether the string is properly encoded. If so, () is returned.
If not, the exception Malformed_code_at
will be raised indicating
the byte position where the problem occurs.
range_pos
: The byte position of the substring to verify
(default: 0)range_len
: The byte length of the substring to verify
(default: byte length of the input string minus range_pos
)val verify_ts : encoding ->
?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> Netsys_types.tstring -> unit
Same for tagged strings
val verify_poly : 's Netstring_tstring.tstring_ops ->
encoding -> ?range_pos:int -> ?range_len:int -> 's -> unit
Polymorphic version