Sometimes MAC users will create PDF files with strange characters in the filename, which can not be handled by either Unix Shell or Perl(by which I mean 'Read', 'Write', 'Copy', etc).

Can you define "not handle" here? I move stuff between Macs and Unix boxes a lot and don't have problems (with the exception of path separators "/" vs ":").

What are you trying to do? What errors are you getting?