Hard to describe, but it looks like it is in a different font and with additional spaces.

You're not giving us a lot to go on, but this sounds like what some terminals do when they're presented with non-ASCII data. I'd look at the data in a hex-editor to confirm (I like Emacs hexl-mode personally).

If you want a better answer you'll need to show us some code and some sample data. Not too much, please, just enough to demonstrate the problem. Also, some info on your environment wouldn't hurt - OS, Perl version, etc.

-sam