use Encode;

# case 1 - reading from a file
open(F, "<:utf8", ...); # or use binmode

# case 2 - storing text into a database
$sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO ... VALUES (?)");
$sth->execute( encode("utf8", $text) );

# case 3 - reading from a database
my @vals = $dbh->fetchrow_array;
@vals = map { decode("utf8", $_) } @vals;

# case 4 - writing to a file or STDOUT
binmode STDOUT, ":utf8";
print $text;

##</code><code>##

sub ord_dump {
  join(' ', map { ord($_) } split(//, $_[0]));
}
print ord_dump($text), "\n";