use HTML::Entities;
my $text = chr(256);
print encode_entities($text);

##</code><code>##

use HTML::Entities;
use Text::Iconv;
my $text = chr(256);
my $conv = Text::Iconv->new("utf8", "latin1");
$text = $conv->convert($text);
encode_entities($text);
print "$text\n";

##</code><code>##

$text =~ s/([^[:print:]])([^[:print:]])/
          '&#'.
          ((((ord($1) & 0x7F) << 6) + (ord($2) & 0x7F)) & 0x7FFF).
          ';'/eg;