#!/bin/env perl use strict; use warnings; use Data::Dumper; use Encode; my $string = 'blabla'; my $is_unicode = utf8::is_utf8($string) ? 'YES' : 'NO'; print "my string: $string is unicode: $is_unicode\n"; print Dumper(\$string), "\n"; my $decoded_string = decode('ASCII', $string); $is_unicode = utf8::is_utf8($decoded_string) ? 'YES' : 'NO'; print "my string: $decoded_string is unicode: $is_unicode\n"; print Dumper(\$decoded_string), "\n";