Use Devel::Peek to dump $header and $header_in_db in order to find out what those strings really are (encoding-wise, etc.)... 

use Devel::Peek;

Dump $header;
Dump $header_in_db;

if ($header eq $header_in_db) {
...

[download]

(look at "PV = ..." in the output)

In reply to Re: 'eq' matching not comprehensive by almut
in thread 'eq' matching not comprehensive by cdherold

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