Next: Interface Index, Previous: Examples, Up: Libidn2 [Contents][Index]
idn2 translates internationalized domain names to the
IDNA2008 encoded format, either for lookup or registration.
If strings are specified on the command line, they are used as input
and the computed output is printed to standard output stdout.
If no strings are specified on the command line, the program read
data, line by line, from the standard input stdin, and print
the computed output to standard output. What processing is performed
(e.g., lookup or register) is indicated by options. If any errors are
encountered, the execution of the applications is aborted.
All strings are expected to be encoded in the preferred charset used
by your locale. Use --debug to find out what this charset is.
On POSIX systems you may use the LANG environment variable to
specify a different locale.
To process a string that starts with -, for example
-foo, use -- to signal the end of parameters, as in
idn2 -r -- -foo.
idn2 recognizes these commands:
-h, --help Print help and exit
-V, --version Print version and exit
-d, --decode Decode (punycode) domain name
-l, --lookup Lookup domain name (default)
-r, --register Register label
-T, --tr46t Enable TR46 transitional processing
-N, --tr46nt Enable TR46 non-transitional processing
--no-tr46 Disable TR46 processing
--usestd3asciirules Enable STD3 ASCII rules
--no-alabelroundtrip Disable A-label roundtrip for lookups
--debug Print debugging information
--quiet Silent operation
On POSIX systems the LANG environment variable can be used to override the system locale for the command being invoked. The system locale may influence what character set is used to decode data (i.e., strings on the command line or data read from the standard input stream), and to encode data to the standard output. If your system is set up correctly, however, the application will use the correct locale and character set automatically. Example usage:
$ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 idn2 ...
Standard usage, reading input from standard input and disabling license and usage instructions:
jas@latte:~$ idn2 --quiet räksmörgås.se xn--rksmrgs-5wao1o.se ...
Reading input from the command line:
jas@latte:~$ idn2 räksmörgås.se blåbærgrød.no xn--rksmrgs-5wao1o.se xn--blbrgrd-fxak7p.no jas@latte:~$
Testing the IDNA2008 Register function:
jas@latte:~$ idn2 --register fußball xn--fuball-cta jas@latte:~$
Getting character data encoded right, and making sure Libidn2 use the
same encoding, can be difficult. The reason for this is that most
systems may encode character data in more than one character encoding,
i.e., using UTF-8 together with ISO-8859-1 or
ISO-2022-JP. This problem is likely to continue to exist until
only one character encoding come out as the evolutionary winner, or
(more likely, at least to some extents) forever.
The first step to troubleshooting character encoding problems with Libidn2 is to use the ‘--debug’ parameter to find out which character set encoding ‘idn2’ believe your locale uses.
jas@latte:~$ idn2 --debug --quiet "" Charset: UTF-8 jas@latte:~$
If it prints ANSI_X3.4-1968 (i.e., US-ASCII), this
indicate you have not configured your locale properly. To configure
the locale, you can, for example, use ‘LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8; export
LANG’ at a /bin/sh prompt, to set up your locale for a Swedish
environment using UTF-8 as the encoding.
Sometimes ‘idn2’ appear to be unable to translate from your
system locale into UTF-8 (which is used internally), and you
will get an error message like this:
idn2: lookup: could not convert string to UTF-8
One explanation is that you didn’t install the ‘iconv’ conversion tools. You can find it as a standalone library in GNU Libiconv (https://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/). On many GNU/Linux systems, this library is part of the system, but you may have to install additional packages to be able to use it.
Another explanation is that the error is correct and you are feeding
‘idn2’ invalid data. This can happen inadvertently if you are
not careful with the character set encoding you use. For example, if
your shell run in a ISO-8859-1 environment, and you invoke
‘idn2’ with the ‘LANG’ environment variable as follows, you
will feed it ISO-8859-1 characters but force it to believe they
are UTF-8. Naturally this will lead to an error, unless the
byte sequences happen to be valid UTF-8. Note that even if you
don’t get an error, the output may be incorrect in this situation,
because ISO-8859-1 and UTF-8 does not in general encode
the same characters as the same byte sequences.
jas@latte:~$ idn2 --quiet --debug "" Charset: ISO-8859-1 jas@latte:~$ LANG=sv_SE.UTF-8 idn2 --debug räksmörgås Charset: UTF-8 input[0] = 0x72 input[1] = 0xc3 input[2] = 0xa4 input[3] = 0xc3 input[4] = 0xa4 input[5] = 0x6b input[6] = 0x73 input[7] = 0x6d input[8] = 0xc3 input[9] = 0xb6 input[10] = 0x72 input[11] = 0x67 input[12] = 0xc3 input[13] = 0xa5 input[14] = 0x73 UCS-4 input[0] = U+0072 UCS-4 input[1] = U+00e4 UCS-4 input[2] = U+00e4 UCS-4 input[3] = U+006b UCS-4 input[4] = U+0073 UCS-4 input[5] = U+006d UCS-4 input[6] = U+00f6 UCS-4 input[7] = U+0072 UCS-4 input[8] = U+0067 UCS-4 input[9] = U+00e5 UCS-4 input[10] = U+0073 output[0] = 0x72 output[1] = 0xc3 output[2] = 0xa4 output[3] = 0xc3 output[4] = 0xa4 output[5] = 0x6b output[6] = 0x73 output[7] = 0x6d output[8] = 0xc3 output[9] = 0xb6 output[10] = 0x72 output[11] = 0x67 output[12] = 0xc3 output[13] = 0xa5 output[14] = 0x73 UCS-4 output[0] = U+0072 UCS-4 output[1] = U+00e4 UCS-4 output[2] = U+00e4 UCS-4 output[3] = U+006b UCS-4 output[4] = U+0073 UCS-4 output[5] = U+006d UCS-4 output[6] = U+00f6 UCS-4 output[7] = U+0072 UCS-4 output[8] = U+0067 UCS-4 output[9] = U+00e5 UCS-4 output[10] = U+0073 xn--rksmrgs-5waap8p jas@latte:~$
The sense moral here is to forget about ‘LANG’ (instead, configure your system locale properly) unless you know what you are doing, and if you want to use ‘LANG’, do it carefully and after verifying with ‘--debug’ that you get the desired results.
Next: Interface Index, Previous: Examples, Up: Libidn2 [Contents][Index]