Thank you for your answer.

I was hoping this problem was not inherent in CMD.exe...
Are you saying that there is no way for a user to drag and drop a file with a non-ASCII name into the console window and have the perl script open that file? Or would installing Win32::Unicode fix this automagically?

"Fixing" cmd.exe is not an option as this script is not intended for my own use. It's an open source script that will mostly be used by computer illiterate people.

It's not really clear to me how the module you linked works... would I need to change my filehandle open and print commands or would it do its thing in the background without the need to change the script itself?

In reply to Re^2: Character encoding in console in Windows by elef
in thread Character encoding in console in Windows by elef

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.