I have some ascii strings output by a different program and written in a file. They contain utf-8 byte representation that I need to convert to utf8. For example, how to convert: 
my $a = "\\xC4\\x80"; # 8 ascii characters

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to 
"\xC4\x80" # 2 code points representing a utf character.

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A simple search and replace won't do, by the way.

In reply to Converting string literal represetation of utf to utf8 by djihed

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