use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;

my $x1 = my $x2 = 'ç';
die if utf8::decode($x2);

use Devel::Peek;

Dump $x1;
Dump $x2;

##</code><code>##

>perl test170921.pl
SV = PV(0xe1af88) at 0xd23560
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,IsCOW,pPOK,UTF8)
  PV = 0xd6b458 "\303\247"\0 [UTF8 "\x{e7}"]
  CUR = 2
  LEN = 10
  COW_REFCNT = 1
SV = PV(0xe1af58) at 0xd22fc0
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
  PV = 0xd6b5a8 "\347"\0
  CUR = 1
  LEN = 10