Either save your file with utf8 encoding & BOM or save it with utf8 encoding and a line with "use utf8;" (or "use encoding 'utf8';"). You can also do a manual fix: 
# file name: test.pl
# save it with utf8 encoding
use Encode qw(decode_utf8);

binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';

$string1 = "This is greek character 'y': ì";
print "Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8\n\n";
print decode_utf8 $string1;

[download]
You have to set an internal flag on utf8 data. See Encode for more info... Edit: I didn't see you've mentioned your perl version. you must upgrade to 5.8.x as almut said, if want serious unicode support...

In reply to Re: Strange behaviour with utf8 and wide chars by Burak
in thread Strange behaviour with utf8 and wide chars by isync

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.