Programming Perl, 4th Edition

encoding

use encoding ENCODING;
use encoding "euc–jp";

This pragma was supposed to let you write Perl source in any ENCODING that you like and have Perl convert your character strings correctly as well as to convert standard output and error to the specified encoding. However, it has never worked correctly and probably never can. Instead, convert your source code from whatever legacy encoding you were using into UTF-8, and put a use utf8 declaration at the top of the file. Set your standard I/O streams using the open pragma or with binmode.