The others are right to point out should be using from_json, but that won't solve the error you're asking about.

The error you are asking about comes from Perl, not JSON. By using use utf8;, you claimed your source code is encoded using UTF-8, but it's not. Remove the use utf8; or convert the source code to UTF-8.

In reply to Re: Malformed UTF-8 character (unexpected continuation byte 0x96, with no preceding start byte) by ikegami
in thread Malformed UTF-8 character by Yllar

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