use Encode qw( encode );
encode('UCS-2le', 'C:\\data.wim')

##</code><code>##

use FileHandle qw( );
my $fh = new FileHandle;
$fh->open("< C:\\data.wim")
   or die;

##</code><code>##

open(my $fh, "<", "C:\\data.wim")
   or die;