I'm not sure get_layers is the best way to get the name of the locale's encoding, but assuming it is, this works: (Perl 5.8.2 linux)

use open ':locale';
use Encode;
use strict;

my $locEnc;
for (PerlIO::get_layers(STDOUT)){
  if (/encoding\((.*)\)/ || /(utf8)/ ){
    $locEnc=$1;last;
  }
}
print "Locale encoding: $locEnc\n";

for (@ARGV) {
  $_=Encode::decode($locEnc,$_)
}

my $i=1;
for (@ARGV) {
  print $i++,"  '",$_,"'(",length($_),")\n";
}
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It decodes (in place) each command-line argument from the locale's encoding, then prints them alongside their length. This helps in understanding what kind of strings Perl thinks it is working with.

-- 
        dakkar - Mobilis in mobile