It makes no difference if if I use utf8 or not (and I thought using us v5.36 set utf8 out of the box, anyway). It sill fails.

Also, same result with sprintf "%vX", just slightly different output. Try it:

#! /usr/bin/env perl

use v5.36;
use utf8;

use Encode 'decode';

# get all the files in the current directory
my @files = map { decode 'UTF-8', $_ } glob("*");
my ($file) = grep { /Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14\s/ } @files;

my $ss = $files[0];
my $hex = sprintf "%vX", $ss;
say $hex;

say $file; # ERROR!

my $blah = "Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14 AM.png";
my $hex2 = sprintf "%vX", $blah;
say $hex2;

say $hex eq $hex2 ? "hexes equal" : "hexes not equal";

say $blah =~ /Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14\s/;  # WORKS!
[download]

OUTPUTS:

53.63.72.65.65.6E.73.68.6F.74.2D.32.30.32.34.2D.30.32.2D.32.33.2D.61.7
+4.2D.31.2E.30.35.2E.31.34.202F.41.4D.2E.70.6E.67
Wide character in say at ./test.pl line 16.
Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14 AM.png
53.63.72.65.65.6E.73.68.6F.74.2D.32.30.32.34.2D.30.32.2D.32.33.2D.61.7
+4.2D.31.2E.30.35.2E.31.34.26.23.38.32.33.39.3B.41.4D.2E.70.6E.67
hexes not equal
[download]