$ perl -wE'use utf8; $_=chr(0xA2); utf8::encode($_) if $ARGV[0]; say length; say /^¢\z/ ?1:0' 0
1
1

$ perl -wE'use utf8; $_=chr(0xA2); utf8::encode($_) if $ARGV[0]; say length; say /^¢\z/ ?1:0' 1
2
0