The behaviour depends on the filehandle. It's documented at the end of read

> depending on the status of the filehandle, either (8-bit) bytes or characters are read.

Similarly, sysread:

> Note that if the filehandle has been marked as ":utf8", Unicode characters are read instead of bytes

So, to read UTF-8, open the file handle with the :encoding(UTF-8) layer.

map{substr$_->[0],$_->[1]||0,1}[\*||{},3],[[]],[ref qr-1,-,-1],[{}],[sub{}^*ARGV,3]

In reply to Re^3: Reading and unpacking on one line by choroba
in thread Reading and unpacking on one line by Anonymous Monk

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