#! /usr/bin/perl
# Perl v5.8.8
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
use Encode;

my $string1 = "weight_\x{2639}";    # Valid Unicode
my $string2 = "weight_\xc2";        # Valid iso-8859-1

my @words;
push(@words,$string1);
push(@words,$string2);
my $str = join(",", @words);
print STDERR "mangled  : ".print_chrcodes($str)."\n";

my @words;
Encode::_utf8_off($string1); push(@words,$string1);
Encode::_utf8_off($string2); push(@words,$string2);
my $str = join(",", @words);
print STDERR "preserved: ".print_chrcodes($str)."\n";

#############################################################
sub print_chrcodes
{
    my $str = shift;
    my $ret;
    foreach my $ascval (unpack("C*", $str)) {
        $ret .= chr($ascval) if($ascval <  128);
        $ret .= sprintf ("<#%x>",$ascval) if($ascval >= 128);
    }
    return $ret;
}