Something else I've noticed. According to perlfunc, if you try to re-open STDOUT or STDERR as an "in memory" file, you have to close it first, implying that if you want to re-open it to as a file, you DON'T need to close it first.

However, if you don't close it first, then the ':utf8' layer won't be applied:

    #!/usr/bin/perl
    use strict;
    use warnings;

    my $utf8="\xe9";

    open STDOUT, ">>:utf8", 'test.txt'  or die $!;
    print "No close: ",$utf8,"\n";

    close STDOUT;
    open STDOUT, ">>:utf8", 'test.txt'  or die $!;
    print "Close: ",$utf8,"\n";


PRINTS:
    No close: \xe9    (not literally - prints character \xe9, not UTF-
+8 encoded)
    Close: é
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Clint

Update: Filed as bug 44703