The first thing that comes to my mind is that Perl uses UTF-8. Are you converting from from your localized character set into UTF-8 (or vice-versa)? I.e. you string in 'my $file', will be takes as a UTF-8 string, If you want a non UTF-8 string, maybe (untested): 
{
  use locale;
  my $file== '06_Protection_de_la_tête.xml';
}

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Man page 'perllocale' for more info on this topic...

In reply to Re: Tk and Non-ASCII File Names by perl-diddler
in thread Tk and Non-ASCII File Names by eff_i_g

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