use Encode "encode"; my $a = "\x{3042}"; # hiragana 'a' == codepoint U+3042 my $a_enc = { # common unicode encodings utf8 => $a, ucs2be => encode("ucs2be", $a), ucs2le => encode("ucs2le", $a), # common jp legacy encodings sjis => encode("sjis", $a), cp932 => encode("cp932", $a), # MS version of shift-jis eucjp => encode("eucjp", $a), # ASCII not possible! ascii => encode("ascii", $a), # -> renders as '?' (3f) }; for my $encoding (sort keys %$a_enc) { printf "%-6s : %s\n", $encoding, unpack("H*", $a_enc->{$encoding}); }