I'm trying to strip out combining diacritics from some form input using this
code:
<head>
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
</head>
<body>
<form action="test.cgi" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="get">
<input type="text" name="text" value="" size="10">
<input type="submit" value="submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
#!/usr/local/bin/perl
use CGI;
$query = CGI::new();
$search_term = $query->param('text');
$sans_diacritics = $search_term;
$sans_diacritics =~ s/\p{M}*//g;
#$sans_diacritics =~ s/o//g;
print qq(Content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
$sans_diacritics
);
exit(0);
In the form, I'm inputting the string "Bartók" with the accented character
being a base character (small Latin letter "o") followed by a combining acute
accent. However, when I print (to the web) $sans_diacritics, I get my input
with no change -- the combining diacritic is still there. I know that my input
is not a precomposed accented character, because I can strip out the base "o"
and the combining accent either stands alone or jumps to another character [2].
The "\p{M}" is a Unicode class name for the character class of Unicode 'marks',
for example accent marks [1]. I've tried these variations (and many others)
and none seem to be doing what I want:
$sans_diacritics =~ s#[\p{Mark}]*##g;
$sans_diacritics =~ tr#[\p{InCombiningDiacriticalMarks}]##;
$sans_diacritics =~ tr#[\p{M}]##;
$sans_diacritics =~ s/\p{M}*//g;
$sans_diacritics =~ s#[\p{M}]##g;
$sans_diacritics =~ s#\x{0301}##g;
$sans_diacritics =~ s#\x{006F}\x{0301}##g;
$sans_diacritics =~ s#[\x{0300}-\x{036F}]*##g;
I'm pulling my hair out on this... so any help would be appreciated. If
there's any other info I can provide, let me know.
My Perl version is 5.8.8 and the script is running on a server running Solaris
9.
-- Michael
[1] per http://perldoc.perl.org/perlretut.html and other documentation
[2] using $sans_diacritics =~ s/o//g;
# Michael Doran, Systems Librarian
# University of Texas at Arlington
# 817-272-5326 office
# 817-688-1926 mobile
# doran(_at_)uta(_dot_)edu
# http://rocky.uta.edu/doran/
