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

[Jan Zahornadsky]

François Charette wrote:
>>> 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.

Yes, thanks for pointing out. There is a parameter --latex that should
be set to --latex=xelatex, shame on me. Now I'm trying to cope with it,
seems really good. Even though I have the feeling native solution seemed
a little faster (might be due to huge amount of such calls and many perl
processes spawning... but that's just price for that comfort)