In 5.8 you can (and should) specify which encoding perl should use when writing.
By default perl5.8 will assume you want latin1 output (but warn and then output in utf8 those strings that do not fit in latin1).

If you switch your environment to utf8 with something like 

env LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 perl -e ...

[download]
then you should get the output you expected.

A different way to do it (TIMTOWTDI) is to explicitly switch STDOUT to a different encoding using the newly repurposed binmode(): 

binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';

[download]

A third way is using the new use open pragma: 

use open ':utf8', ':std';

[download]

So to get your one-liner to work, it becomes: 

perl -Mopen=:utf8,:std -e '$c="f6"; $u=pack("U",hex($c)); print $u, "\
+x{f6}"' | od -tx1

[download]

I'm sure you'll be able to find your way to the documentation for these new perl5.8 features. A good start is the perluniintro manpage.

In reply to Re: utf8 output with 5.8 by Arrowhead
in thread utf8 output with 5.8 by axelrose

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.