in reply to Re^2: an ever-available file for opening
in thread an ever-available file for opening

Hm. I'm not sure that your justification stands up to scrutiny, but if you must, how about: 

my $utfData = "\x...";
open UTF, '<:encoding(utf8)', \$utfData or die 'Must be pre-5,8';
die 'Bad stuff happened' unless <UTF> eq 'Whatever you expect';

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