redhat man page for bytes

bytes(3pm)						 Perl Programmers Reference Guide						bytes(3pm)

NAME
       bytes - Perl pragma to force byte semantics rather than character semantics

SYNOPSIS
	   use bytes;
	   no bytes;

DESCRIPTION
       The "use bytes" pragma disables character semantics for the rest of the lexical scope in which it appears.  "no bytes" can be used to
       reverse the effect of "use bytes" within the current lexical scope.

       Perl normally assumes character semantics in the presence of character data (i.e. data that has come from a source that has been marked as
       being of a particular character encoding). When "use bytes" is in effect, the encoding is temporarily ignored, and each string is treated
       as a series of bytes.

       As an example, when Perl sees "$x = chr(400)", it encodes the character in UTF-8 and stores it in $x. Then it is marked as character data,
       so, for instance, "length $x" returns 1. However, in the scope of the "bytes" pragma, $x is treated as a series of bytes - the bytes that
       make up the UTF8 encoding - and "length $x" returns 2:

	   $x = chr(400);
	   print "Length is ", length $x, "
";     # "Length is 1"
	   printf "Contents are %vd
", $x;	    # "Contents are 400"
	   {
	       use bytes;
	       print "Length is ", length $x, "
"; # "Length is 2"
	       printf "Contents are %vd
", $x;     # "Contents are 198.144"
	   }

       For more on the implications and differences between character semantics and byte semantics, see perlunicode.

SEE ALSO
       perlunicode, utf8

perl v5.8.0							    2002-06-01								bytes(3pm)