# phpman > man > Encode::TW

## NAME
    [Encode::TW](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Encode%3A%3ATW/markdown) - Taiwan-based Chinese Encodings

## SYNOPSIS
        use Encode qw/encode decode/;
        $big5 = encode("big5", $utf8); # loads [Encode::TW](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Encode%3A%3ATW/markdown) implicitly
        $utf8 = decode("big5", $big5); # ditto

## DESCRIPTION
    This module implements tradition Chinese charset encodings as used in Taiwan and Hong Kong.
    Encodings supported are as follows.

      Canonical   Alias             Description
      --------------------------------------------------------------------
      big5-eten   /\bbig-?5$/i      Big5 encoding (with ETen extensions)
              /\bbig5-?et(en)?$/i
              /\btca-?big5$/i
      big5-hkscs  /\bbig5-?hk(scs)?$/i
                  /\bhk(scs)?-?big5$/i
                                    Big5 + Cantonese characters in Hong Kong
      MacChineseTrad                Big5 + Apple Vendor Mappings
      cp950                         Code Page 950
                                    = Big5 + Microsoft vendor mappings
      --------------------------------------------------------------------

    To find out how to use this module in detail, see Encode.

## NOTES
    Due to size concerns, "EUC-TW" (Extended Unix Character), "CCCII" (Chinese Character Code for
    Information Interchange), "BIG5PLUS" (CMEX's Big5+) and "BIG5EXT" (CMEX's Big5e) are distributed
    separately on CPAN, under the name [Encode::HanExtra](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Encode%3A%3AHanExtra/markdown). That module also contains extra China-based
    encodings.

## BUGS
    Since the original "big5" encoding (1984) is not supported anywhere (glibc and DOS-based systems
    uses "big5" to mean "big5-eten"; Microsoft uses "big5" to mean "cp950"), a conscious decision
    was made to alias "big5" to "big5-eten", which is the de facto superset of the original big5.

    The "CNS11643" encoding files are not complete. For common "CNS11643" manipulation, please use
    "EUC-TW" in [Encode::HanExtra](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Encode%3A%3AHanExtra/markdown), which contains planes 1-7.

    The ASCII region (0x00-0x7f) is preserved for all encodings, even though this conflicts with
    mappings by the Unicode Consortium.

## SEE ALSO
    Encode