perl sax_utf.pl utf8-1.xml parser is XML::LibXML::SAX::Parser file: utf8-1.xml characters for elt: Ç foo bytes for elt: C7 20 66 6F 6F SV = PV(0x288c658) at 0x233d2e8 REFCNT = 1 FLAGS = (PADMY,POK,IsCOW,pPOK,UTF8) PV = 0x2b28228 "\303\207 foo"\0 [UTF8 "\x{c7} foo"] CUR = 6 LEN = 10 COW_REFCNT = 1