To add a bit more on this chaos, your script works fine at least for getOpenFile/getSaveFile and Unicode paths on Windows 10 running ActivePerl 5.16 while it fires the error you mentioned on Strawberry Perl 5.28. I have the latest Tk installed. In my humble opinion, Tk is broken as far as communicating with the Windows system is concerned. Which is a shame, because Perl Unicode support is good!