Ⓗⓞⓦ ⓣⓞ ⓑⓔ ⓐⓝⓝⓞⓨⓘⓝⓖ ⓦⓘⓣⓗ Ⓟⓔⓡⓛ ⓐⓝⓓ Ⓤⓝⓘⓒⓞⓓⓔ

It’s been so long since I’ve programmed in Perl. Twelve years ago, it was my life, but what with the Raspberry Pi intervening, I hadn’t used it in a while. It’s been so long, in fact, that I wasn’t aware of the new language structures available since version 5.14. Perl’s Unicode support has got a lot more robust, and I’m sick of Python’s whining about codecs when processing anything other than ASCII anyway. So I thought I’d combine re-learning some modern Perl with some childish amusement.

What I came up with was a routine to convert ASCII alphanumerics ([0-9A-Za-z]) to Unicode Enclosed Alphanumerics ([⓪-⑨Ⓐ-Ⓩⓐ-ⓩ]) for advanced lulz purposes. Ⓘ ⓣⓗⓘⓝⓚ ⓘⓣ ⓦⓞⓡⓚⓢ ⓡⓐⓣⓗⓔⓡ ⓦⓔⓛⓛ:

#!/usr/bin/perl
# annoying.pl - ⓑⓔ ⓐⓝⓝⓞⓨⓘⓝⓖ ⓦⓘⓣⓗ ⓤⓝⓘⓒⓞⓓⓔ
# created by scruss on 2014-05-18

use v5.14;
# fun UTF8 tricks from http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6162484/
use strict;
use utf8;
use warnings;
use charnames qw( :full :short );
sub annoyify;

die "usage: $0 ", annoyify('string to print like this'), "\n" if ( $#ARGV < 0 );
say annoyify( join( ' ', @ARGV ) );
exit;

# 💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩💩

sub annoyify() {
    # convert ascii to chars in circles
    my $str = shift;
    my @out;
    foreach ( split( '', $str ) ) {
        my $c = ord($_);             # remember, can be > 127 for UTF8
        if ( $c == charnames::vianame("DIGIT ZERO") )
	{
            # 💩💩💩 sigh; this one's real special ... 💩💩💩
            $c = charnames::vianame("CIRCLED DIGIT ZERO");
        }
        elsif ($c >= charnames::vianame("DIGIT ONE")
            && $c <= charnames::vianame("DIGIT NINE") )
        {
            # numerals, 1-9 only (grr)
            $c =
              charnames::vianame("CIRCLED DIGIT ONE") +
              $c -
              charnames::vianame("DIGIT ONE");
        }
        elsif ($c >= charnames::vianame("LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A")
            && $c <= charnames::vianame("LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z") )
        {
            # upper case
            $c =
              charnames::vianame("CIRCLED LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A") +
              $c -
              charnames::vianame("LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A");
        }
        elsif ($c >= charnames::vianame("LATIN SMALL LETTER A")
            && $c <= charnames::vianame("LATIN SMALL LETTER Z") )
        {
            # lower case
            $c =
              charnames::vianame("CIRCLED LATIN SMALL LETTER A") +
              $c -
              charnames::vianame("LATIN SMALL LETTER A");
        }
        else {
            # pass thru non-ascii chars
        }
        push @out, chr($c);
    }
    return join( '', @out );
}

Yes, I really did have to do that special case for ⓪; ⓪…⑨ are not contiguous like ASCII 0…9. ⓑⓞⓞ!