use I18N::Collate; setlocale(LC_COLLATE, 'locale-of-your-choice'); $s1 = new I18N::Collate "scalar_data_1"; $s2 = new I18N::Collate "scalar_data_2";
You can compare $s1 and $s2 above with
$s1 le $s2to extract the data itself, you'll need a dereference: $$s1
This uses POSIX::setlocale(). The basic collation conversion is done by strxfrm() which terminates at NUL characters being a decent C routine. collate_xfrm() handles embedded NUL characters gracefully. Due to cmp and overload magic, lt, le, eq, ge, and gt work also. The available locales depend on your operating system; try whether locale -a shows them or man pages for ``locale'' or ``nlsinfo'' or the direct approach ls /usr/lib/nls/loc or ls /usr/lib/nls. Not all the locales that your vendor supports are necessarily installed: please consult your operating system's documentation and possibly your local system administration.
The locale names are probably something like "xx_XX.(ISO)?8859-N" or "xx_XX.(ISO)?8859N", for example "fr_CH.ISO8859-1" is the Swiss (CH) variant of French (fr), ISO Latin (8859) 1 (-1) which is the Western European character set.