I use ISO-8859-1 as my locale, so my blobs, commits and tags are in this encoding. On perl v5.8.6, decode_utf8 of any non utf-8 value returns undefined: $cat xy #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use CGI qw(:standard :escapeHTML -nosticky); use CGI::Util qw(unescape); use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser); use Encode; use Fcntl ':mode'; use File::Find qw(); use File::Basename qw(basename); binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'; print decode_utf8('äöü'); $perl xy [Mon May 21 22:00:00 2007] xy: Use of uninitialized value in print at xy line 14. If gitweb encounters, eg. an "Umlaut" (äöü) in a commit/tag, use of uninitialized value message are generated. In one case, decode_utf8($long) in format_subject_html is undefined, which results in a invalid link (a tag contains only title without any value assignment) and a browser message, that the html is not valid. The previous installed version of git/gitweb (1.5.0rc3) showed only small black rhombuses, but didn't generate "uninitialized value" messages or invalid html. So there is regression between git-1.5.0 and git-1.5.2. Adding $var = encode_utf8($var) if (!defined decode_utf8($var)) for each "uninitialized value" message results in a correct result for me. I wanted to post a patch with these changes, as it solved my locale problem. But then I tried the same a different computer with a newer perl (v5.8.8). $ cat x #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use CGI qw(:standard :escapeHTML -nosticky); use CGI::Util qw(unescape); use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser); use Encode; use Fcntl ':mode'; use File::Find qw(); use File::Basename qw(basename); binmode STDOUT, ':utf8'; print decode_utf8('äöü'); $ perl x ï¿œï¿œï¿ Here perl decodes the ISO-8859-1 text to something differnent: 00000000 ef bf bd ef bf bd ef bf bd |ï¿œï¿œï¿ The result is, that all "Umlaute" are shown as a small black rhombus in gitweb (and no invalid html). mfg Martin Kögler cat x |hexdump -C 00000000 23 21 2f 75 73 72 2f 62 69 6e 2f 70 65 72 6c 0a |#!/usr/bin/perl.| 00000010 75 73 65 20 73 74 72 69 63 74 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 |use strict;.use | 00000020 77 61 72 6e 69 6e 67 73 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 43 47 |warnings;.use CG| 00000030 49 20 71 77 28 3a 73 74 61 6e 64 61 72 64 20 3a |I qw(:standard :| 00000040 65 73 63 61 70 65 48 54 4d 4c 20 2d 6e 6f 73 74 |escapeHTML -nost| 00000050 69 63 6b 79 29 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 43 47 49 3a 3a |icky);.use CGI::| 00000060 55 74 69 6c 20 71 77 28 75 6e 65 73 63 61 70 65 |Util qw(unescape| 00000070 29 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 43 47 49 3a 3a 43 61 72 70 |);.use CGI::Carp| 00000080 20 71 77 28 66 61 74 61 6c 73 54 6f 42 72 6f 77 | qw(fatalsToBrow| 00000090 73 65 72 29 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 45 6e 63 6f 64 65 |ser);.use Encode| 000000a0 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 46 63 6e 74 6c 20 27 3a 6d 6f |;.use Fcntl ':mo| 000000b0 64 65 27 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 46 69 6c 65 3a 3a 46 |de';.use File::F| 000000c0 69 6e 64 20 71 77 28 29 3b 0a 75 73 65 20 46 69 |ind qw();.use Fi| 000000d0 6c 65 3a 3a 42 61 73 65 6e 61 6d 65 20 71 77 28 |le::Basename qw(| 000000e0 62 61 73 65 6e 61 6d 65 29 3b 0a 0a 62 69 6e 6d |basename);..binm| 000000f0 6f 64 65 20 53 54 44 4f 55 54 2c 20 27 3a 75 74 |ode STDOUT, ':ut| 00000100 66 38 27 3b 0a 0a 70 72 69 6e 74 20 64 65 63 6f |f8';..print deco| 00000110 64 65 5f 75 74 66 38 28 27 e4 f6 fc 27 29 3b 0a |de_utf8('äöü');.| 00000120 - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe git" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html