$ perl -le'print "\x{00A0}" =~ /[^\S \n]/ ?1:0;' 0 # Expected $ perl -E'say "\x{00A0}" =~ /[^\S \n]/ ?1:0;' 0 # Feature unicode_strings doesn't fix regexes yet. $ perl -le'print "\N{U+00A0}" =~ /[^\S \n]/ ?1:0;' 0 # Surprised! $ perl -le'print "\x{2660}\x{00A0}" =~ /[^\S \n]/ ?1:0;' 0 # Surprised!