[XeTeX] String manipulation (substr and similar) in XeLaTeX

[François Charette]

>> Have you considered using PerlTeX ?
>> (http://tug.ctan.org/cgi-bin/ctanPackageInformation.py?id=perltex)
>>     
> I haven't heard about that TeX branch before and looks wonderful!
> However, I am afraid it's not suitable for me as long as it doesn't
> support unicode and fonts at at least similar level to XeTeX. Or does
> it? (I gave it only a quick try so far)
>   

PerlTeX is NOT a TeX engine (like XeTeX) but simply a wrapper that 
enables communication between TeX (or pdfTeX or XeTeX) and Perl and 
hence allows you to write macros in the Perl language instead of 
(La)TeX. I have not used it much, but since Perl is excellent at 
manipulating Unicode strings, that is certainly worth a look. AFAIK 
there is no reason why it should not work with XeTeX.

François