G'day vasanthgk91,

When posting Unicode in <code> tags, you'll get HTML character entity references. This is one instance where you should markup your code in <pre> tags.

When your source contains Unicode characters, you should use the utf8 pragma.

Example not using utf8:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
    my $text = q{சிவகாசி அருகே வெடி விபத்து : 2 பேர் உயிரிழப்பு};
    say length $text;                                            
'
120

Example using utf8:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
    use utf8;                                                    
    my $text = q{சிவகாசி அருகே வெடி விபத்து : 2 பேர் உயிரிழப்பு};
    say length $text;
'
46

Having no idea what constitutes a character in the Tamil language, I'll leave you tell me if 46 is the right answer.

Update: Actually, that does add up. 7(spaces) + 1(:) + 1(2) + 37 * 7(length '&#nnnn;') = 268, cf. "output I get wrong==268"

$ perl -E 'say(7+1+1+37*7)'
268
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