Encode::Alias - alias definitions to encodings use Encode; use Encode::Alias; define_alias( newName => ENCODING); Allows newName to be used as an alias for ENCODING. ENCODING may be either the name of an encoding or an encoding object (as described in Encode). Currently newName can be specified in the following ways: define_alias( qr/^iso8859-(\d+)$/i => '"iso-8859-$1"' ); In this case, if ENCODING is not a reference, it is "eval"-ed in order to allow $1 etc. to be substituted. The example is one way to alias names as used in X11 fonts to the MIME names for the iso-8859-* family. Note the double quotes inside the single quotes. If you are using a regex here, you have to use the quotes as shown or it won't work. Also note that regex handling is tricky even for the experienced. Use it with caution. define_alias( sub { return /^iso8859-(\d+)$/i ? "iso-8859-$1" : undef } , ''); In this case, $_ will be set to the name that is being looked up and ENCODING is passed to the sub as its first argument. The example is another way to alias names as used in X11 fonts to the MIME names for the iso-8859-* family.

Alias overloading
You can override predefined aliases by simply applying define_alias(). The new alias is always evaluated first, and when neccessary, define_alias() flushes the internal cache to make the new definition available. # redirect SHIFT_JIS to MS/IBM Code Page 932, which is a # superset of SHIFT_JIS define_alias( qr/shift.*jis$/i => '"cp932"' ); define_alias( qr/sjis$/i => '"cp932"' ); If you want to zap all predefined aliases, you can use Encode::Alias->undef_aliases; to do so. And Encode::Alias->init_aliases; gets the factory settings back. Encode, Encode::Supported