FIXED!! Or at least I'm on the right track! Thanks.

I read a bit about unicode.

I then got my Perl script to read the directory listing and it listed "número.png" instead of the expected "número.png".

The script did however properly read the word "número" from my data file.

I got my program to encode the word "número" which it read from the data file. This converted it to "número". I then verified (-e "número.png") and it found it.

Thanks again