use bytes is almost never a good idea; in essence, it tells perl to consider any strings that perl knows are utf8 encoded as if each byte of the encoded form were a separate character. It's a relic of 5.6's failed approach to unicode, IMO. Leave it off, and so long as you have no exposure any data perl thinks is utf8 encoded, you will have no compatibility problems. The only semi-invisible place utf8 may creep in with newer perls (5.8.1+) is if you have a source file that is UTF-16 encoded, with proper byte order marks at the beginning; in such a file, perl will have literal strings that contain high-bit characters encoded as utf8.

In reply to Re: Warning: Unicode bytes! by Anomynous Monk
in thread Warning: Unicode bytes! by BrowserUk

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