use strict;
use warnings;
use Encode;

$a = "\x{100}";
$b = Encode::encode_utf8($a);
print "a = ", join(',', map ord($_), split //, $a), "\n";
print "b = ", join(',', map ord($_), split //, $b), "\n";
__END__
$ perl /tmp/p
a = 256
b = 196,128
$