Thanks, I've incorporated that. When I write the utf-8 as a file, do I also need to wrap it with that check?

######################################################################
+##################
sub write_file_utf8 {
    my $outfilename= shift; # appears in browser tabs
    my $outstr = shift; # file as a string
    ##################################################################
+##############
    open OUTFILE,  ">:utf8" , $outfilename 
        or die "cannot open >:utf8 $outfilename: $!";
    #binmode STDOUT, ":utf8";
    print OUTFILE $outstr, "\n";
    close(OUTFILE);
} #sub
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