From perlio (emphasis mine): 
    :utf8
        Declares that the stream accepts perl's *internal* encoding of
        characters. (Which really is UTF-8 on ASCII machines, but is
        UTF-EBCDIC on EBCDIC machines.) ...

        Note that this layer does not validate byte sequences. For reading
        input, using ":encoding(utf8)" instead of bare ":utf8" is strongly
        recommended.

I recommend looking at the utf8::all module, which wraps all these confusing utf8 machinations in one pragma, and allows you do simply use '<' or '>' as the mode when opening text files (see that module's synopsis).

In reply to Re: Don't want BOM in output file by Anonymous Monk
in thread Don't want BOM in output file by beerman

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