I checked every bit of the output-process and finally reached my switches from the perl shebang
#!/usr/bin/perl -COE

So far this set of switches in combination with decoding_utf8() on user inputted data served me quite well. Until today when removing the switches magically solved my problems with the raw data streamout. As it seems, -COE breaks the binary data output with print().

Now, should I keep it this way, without -COE? As said, I generally serve utf-8 webpages with this script and it handles binary file prints as well.

I am aware of the fact that I need to decide wheater I use -COE on the perl command-line and use a binmode, ':raw' on the output or the other way round: I encode all non-raw outputs to :utf8 before output except the raw data. Is there a best practice? The fact that CGI::Application::Plugin::Stream uses no fancy STDOUT commands seems to indicate that it's better to encode all text outputs before print, or it may be because the module is not utf-8 aware. Any suggestions?

Would be great if some knowing monk could outline what combination (-switches, encode, decode) is best to use 1. on the shebang, 2. form-data and 3. on output.

BTW: in CGI::Fast mode: should it switch STDOUT back into what it was before, after my print, or will CGI::Application magically clear the binmode on the next cycle? See:

...read $fh in binmode etc.
binmode STDOUT, ':raw';
print $buffer;
print '';
close ( $fh );
binmode STDOUT, ':utf8';   <-- :utf8 the equivalent of -CO right?
return;
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