It sounds like your bug would only rear its head when $id actually contains non-ASCII characters.
No! ASCII only - letters and digits. Just like in example of my original posting: 
my $utfstring = "123 \x{439}\x{439}\x{439}\x{439}";
my ($ascii_but_utf, undef) = split ' ', $utfstring;

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In reply to Re^8: Unicode strings internals by vsespb
in thread [SOLVED] Unicode strings internals by vsespb

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