#!/usr/bin/perl use v5.10; use Encode; use Data::Dumper; my $temp = encode( "iso-8859-1", 'Köln' ); say Dumper "========== encode string =========="; say $temp, "(", length($temp), ")"; my $VUOrt0 = 'Köln'; $temp = encode( "iso-8859-1", $VUOrt0 ); say Dumper "========== encode scalar variable =========="; say $temp, "(", length($temp), ")";