What you said is very misleading. 
$ perl -le'
    $_ = "\xc2\xa0";
    print /^\h$/ ? "h" : "not h";
'
not h

[download]

Of course, you are referring to the internal encoding. 

$ perl -le'
    $_ = "\xA0";

    utf8::downgrade $_;
    print /^\s$/ ? "s" : "not s";
    print /^\h$/ ? "h" : "not h";

    utf8::upgrade  $_;
    print /^\s$/ ? "s" : "not s";
    print /^\h$/ ? "h" : "not h";
'
not s
h
s
h

[download]

Unfortunately, that's irrelevant in the OP's case since he needs to decode his UTF-8 first, and will make the internal encoding UTF-8.

In reply to Re^5: Something strange in the world or Regexes by ikegami
in thread Something strange in the world or Regexes by mrguy123

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