And we're back to the original question (answered here): You're missing use utf8;.

Also, you should be using sprintf "%vX", $_ instead of unpack "H*", $_. The former handles any strings. The latter only handles strings of bytes (strings where the characters are no higher than 0xFF), so it's definitely inappropriate here. 

#!/usr/bin/perl

use v5.36;
use warnings;

# Source code encoded using UTF-8.
use utf8;

# Terminal provides/expects UTF-8 (for `say`).
use open ":std", ":encoding(UTF-8)"; 

use Encode qw( decode_utf8 );

my $base = "Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14\x{202F}AM.png";
my $lit  = "Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14 AM.png";

my @files = map { decode_utf8 $_ } glob( "*" );
my ( $file ) = grep { /^Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14\s/ } @files;

my $base_hex = sprintf "%vX", $hex;

for ( $base, $lit, $file ) {
   say $_;
   say $_ eq $base ? "same" : "different";

   my $hex = sprintf "%vX", $_;
   say $hex;
   say $hex eq $base_hex ? "same" : "different";
}

Output: 

Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14 AM.png
same
53.63.72.65.65.6E.73.68.6F.74.2D.32.30.32.34.2D.30.32.2D.32.33.2D.61.74.2D.31.2E.30.35.2E.31.34.202F.41.4D.2E.70.6E.67
same
Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14 AM.png
same
53.63.72.65.65.6E.73.68.6F.74.2D.32.30.32.34.2D.30.32.2D.32.33.2D.61.74.2D.31.2E.30.35.2E.31.34.202F.41.4D.2E.70.6E.67
same
Screenshot-2024-02-23-at-1.05.14 AM.png
same
53.63.72.65.65.6E.73.68.6F.74.2D.32.30.32.34.2D.30.32.2D.32.33.2D.61.74.2D.31.2E.30.35.2E.31.34.202F.41.4D.2E.70.6E.67
same

In reply to Re^10: Any good ways to handle NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE characters in regex in newer versions of Perl? by ikegami
in thread Any good ways to handle NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE characters in regex in newer versions of Perl? by nysus

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