$ 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