If the source is UTF-8, most string operations (like encoding into a specified character encoding) behaves very differently in the two cases (decoded or not decoded).

If it's indeed decoded, encode($destination_encoding, $string) will work (but you still need to know in which encoding you want to store it).

In reply to Re^3: How to encode for non-unicode output by moritz
in thread How to encode for non-unicode output by cheerful

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