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UTF-8 is a variable-length (1 to 6 bytes, current character allocation
+s require 4 bytes)...

As an example, when Perl sees $x = chr(400), it encodes the character 
+in UTF-8 and stores it in $x. Then it is marked as character data, so
+, for instance, length $x returns 1. However, in the scope of the byt
+es pragma, $x is treated as a series of bytes - the bytes that make u
+p the UTF8 encoding - and length $x returns 2:

$x = chr(400);
print 'Length: ', length $x, qq~\n~;
...
  use bytes;
  print 'Length (bytes): ', length $x, qq~\n~;
}

Length: 1
Length (bytes): 2