Thanks to all for the help. Anonymous Monk's links suggest that I have an X-Y problem where the X has already been solved. This seems like the ideal solution, but so far I have not been able to make it work. I have a lot to learn about terminals etc.

I had rejected the binmode idea because I expected it to remove the :crlf layer. I forgot that I should test all possible solutions for that.

The observation that my test has the very flaw that I was trying to fix is interesting. Despite the error, it still demonstrates my problem. The fact that Result1 is a sigma proves that the shell script did not encode the \xe4. In fact Result2 masks the problem by encoding the character in the main program.

Sorry for the confusion to other windows users. My solution is only intended for 'hobby' use on my own system. I do not expect to use it for anything except an occasional download from perlmonks.

I probably will end up with the binmode solution. I am still trying to devise a suitable test. Most of my difficulty is unrelated to the problem (e.g. quotes and escapes).