I switched from "open(FILE, "<:encoding(UTF-8)", $file)" to using decode()

eh? UTF-8?

decode and <:encoding are the same thing.

UTF-16:Unrecognised BOM

When you specify UTF-16, the file must have a BOM. Specify the actual encoding (UTF-16le or UTF-16be) otherwise.

I also tried using USC-2, but I get "illegal unicoded char",

That's not possible. I've just shown you that every possible byte combination is accepted by decode.

Why bytes causes that, and what encoding did you specify, UCS-2le or UCS-2be?

Next, I'll try the suggested success/fail code, but I don't quite understand it.

It demonstrates that all bytes combination work with UCS-2, and since UCS-2 is a very close relative to UTF-16, you'll get further by using that. It's probably what Word uses anyway, since Windows likes to lie about using UTF-16.

In reply to Re^3: Decoding bad UTF-16 by ikegami
in thread Decoding bad UTF-16 by gregality

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