Bug#589730: perl-doc: perlunicode(1) man page suggests the ":utf8" layer, which can be unsafe

[Vincent Lefevre]

Package: perl-doc
Version: 5.10.1-13
Severity: important

The perlunicode(1) man page gives bad information, which can lead to
write unsafe code. It says:

  Input and Output Layers
      Perl knows when a filehandle uses Perl's internal Unicode
      encodings (UTF-8, or UTF-EBCDIC if in EBCDIC) if the filehandle
      is opened with the ":utf8" layer.  Other encodings can be
      converted to Perl's encoding on input or from Perl's encoding
      on output by use of the ":encoding(...)"  layer.  See open.

It should warn against the usage of the ":utf8" layer, and
"Other encodings" is misleading as one may think that the
UTF-8 encoding is not concerned by the ":encoding(...)" layer,
while one should use ":encoding(UTF-8)" instead of ":utf8".

See:
  http://perlgeek.de/en/article/encodings-and-unicode
  http://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=644786

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.32-5-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=POSIX, LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO8859-1 (charmap=ISO-8859-1)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages perl-doc depends on:
ii  perl                          5.10.1-13  Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 

perl-doc recommends no packages.

Versions of packages perl-doc suggests:
ii  groff                         1.20.1-10  GNU troff text-formatting system
ii  man-db [man-browser]          2.5.7-3    on-line manual pager

-- no debconf information