my $text = get("http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/~hajic/courses/npfl067/TEXTCZ1.txt"); open my $FILE, '>', 'file.txt' or die "$!\n"; print $FILE $text; open $FILE, "<:encoding(iso-8859-2)", 'file.txt' or die "$!\n"; open my $NEWFILE, ">:encoding(utf-8)", 'fileutf8.txt' or die "$!\n"; print $NEWFILE $_ while <$FILE>; open $FILE, "<:encoding(utf-8)", 'fileutf8.txt' or die "$!\n"; $content = do { local $/; <$FILE> };