perl -e 'print "\xc1\n"' | xxd -g1
0000000: c1 0a                                          ..

perl -CO -e 'print "\xc1\n"' | xxd -g1
0000000: c3 81 0a                                       ...

##</code><code>##

$ perl -MEncode -e '$x="\xc1";
$y = decode("iso-8859-1",$x);   # $y has utf8 flag set
$c = ( $x eq $y ) ? "eq":"ne"; 
print "$x $c $y\n";' | od -ctxC

0000000  301       e   q     301  \n                                    
           c1  20  65  71  20  c1  0a                                    
0000007

$ perl -MEncode -e '$x="\xc1";
$y = encode("utf8",$x);         # utf8 flag is not set
$c = ( $x eq $y ) ? "eq":"ne"; 
print "$x $c $y\n";' | od -ctxC
0000000  301       n   e     303 201  \n                                
           c1  20  6e  65  20  c3  81  0a                                
0000010

##</code><code>##

perl -pe 'BEGIN{binmode STDOUT,":utf8"}' < file.iso > file.utf8

# or, using the more cryptic "-C" option:

perl -CO -pe '' < file.iso > file.utf8