I doubt that. I suspect the HTML was buggy too.

Could you show the HTML's HEAD element and the od -c output for réserve?

( Update: hum, .exe? You might not have od. Alternative: perl -nE"say unpack 'H*', $_ if /serv/;" file.html )

I once again recommend the uniquote program for such things. It is really way better than od or cat -v or anything, because it actually shows you the proper characters. 
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | uniquote
r\N{U+E9}serve
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | uniquote -x
r\x{E9}serve
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | uniquote -v
r\N{LATIN SMALL LETTER E WITH ACUTE}serve
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | uniquote -b
r\xC3\xA9serve

$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | uniquote --xml
réserve
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | uniquote --html
réserve
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | uniquote --html --verbose
réserve

$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | nfd | uniquote -v
re\N{COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT}serve

$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16 | 
+uniquote --encoding=UTF-16 -x
r\x{E9}serve
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF-16 | 
+uniquote -b
\xFE\xFF\x00r\x00\xE9\x00s\x00e\x00r\x00v\x00e\x00
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | iconv -f UTF-8 -t MacRoman 
+| uniquote --encoding=MacRoman -x
r\x{E9}serve
$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' | iconv -f UTF-8 -t MacRoman 
+| uniquote -b
r\x8Eserve

$ perl -Mutf8 -CS -wle 'print "réserve"' > reserve.utf8
$ iconv -f UTF-8 -t MacRoman < reserve.utf8 > reserve.macroman
$ iconv -f UTF-8 -t UTF16-BE < reserve.utf8 > reserve.utf16be

$ uniwc reserve.{macroman,utf8,utf16be}
   Paras    Lines    Words   Graphs    Chars    Bytes File
       0        1        1        8        8        8 reserve.macroman
       0        1        1        8        8        9 reserve.utf8
       0        1        1        8        8       16 reserve.utf16be

$ uniquote reserve.{macroman,utf8,utf16be}
r\N{U+E9}serve
r\N{U+E9}serve
r\N{U+E9}serve

$ uniquote -b reserve.{macroman,utf8,utf16be}
r\x8Eserve
r\xC3\xA9serve
\x00r\x00\xE9\x00s\x00e\x00r\x00v\x00e\x00

[download]
See how nifty that is?

In reply to Re^4: Encoding/decoding question by tchrist
in thread Encoding/decoding question by slugger415

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.