G'day tel2,

"I'm guessing I might need to "use utf8", ..."

Sorry, but that would be a bad guess. The documentation for the utf8 pragma states, in emboldened text:

"Do not use this pragma for anything else than telling Perl that your script is written in UTF-8."

Your basic problem here is that the filehandle, FILE, doesn't know about the UTF-8. Example of what's happening:

$ perl -Mutf8 -wE 'say "e-acute: é; u-acute: ú"'
e-acute: ?; u-acute: ?
[download]

Here's three ways to address this problem:

• Use the binmode function, e.g.

  $ perl -Mutf8 -wE 'binmode STDOUT => ":utf8"; say "e-acute: é; u-acute
  +: ú"'
  e-acute: é; u-acute: ú
  [download]

• Use the open pragma, e.g.

  $ perl -Mutf8 -wE 'use open OUT => qw{:utf8 :std}; say "e-acute: é; u-
  +acute: ú"'
  e-acute: é; u-acute: ú
  [download]

• Use the 3-argument form of the open function and specify the encoding in the mode. Something like this:

  open my $fh, '>:encoding(UTF-8)', $filename
  [download]

Here's some recommendations for your code. This is unrelated to the UTF-8 issue.

• Let Perl tell you about problems. Start using the strict pragma and the warnings pragma.
• Your code is littered with package variables: $cgi, an object reference; $f1, a string; FILE, a filehandle; and so on. These are all global and suffer from the same problems as all global variables. Start using lexical variables, and control their scope, for far less error-prone code. There's a lot of information about this in perlsub; the "Private Variables via my()" section would be a good place to start.
• Don't use indirect object syntax, e.g. code like new CGI. Here's what perlobj: Invoking Class Methods says, in emboldened text, at the start of the Indirect Object Syntax section:

  "Outside of the file handle case, use of this syntax is discouraged as it can confuse the Perl interpreter. See below for more details."

• Start using lexical filehandles with the 3-argument form of the open function. See that document for more about this.
• Hand-crafting I/O die messages is time-consuming and error-prone. Let Perl do this task for you with the autodie pragma. You can then write code like this:

  use autodie;
  ...
  open my $in_fh, '<', $infile;
  open my $out_fh, '>', $outfile;
  [download]

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