Noone else posted anything, so I'll give it a quick go...

It seems you're assuming Perl's internal format is UTF-8.

To be sure, it would help if I knew exactly what you were getting from the database. The "PV = " lines printed by following would provide that info.

use Devel::Peek qw( Dump );
Dump($db_field);  # Output sent to STDERR
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You should get one of the following four output combinations for chr(259) and chr(238).

259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
238: PV = 0x18e914c "\356"\0

259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0 [UTF8 "\x{ee}"]

259: PV = 0x18d73fc "?"\0
238: PV = 0x18d7444 "\356"\0

259: PV = 0x18d736c "\304\203"\0
238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0

259: PV = 0x18d74dc "\304\203"\0     <- Lack of [UTF8 ...]
238: PV = 0x18d74dc "\356"\0
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• 259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
  238: PV = 0x18e914c "\356"\0
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  or

  259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
  238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0 [UTF8 "\x{ee}"]
  [download]

  The data is in Perl's internal text format (called "UTF8", no dash). It can either be in iso-latin-1 or UTF-8. iso-latin-1 is preferred since it's faster, but it can only be used if every character in the string can be represented by iso-latin-1.

  Solution: You need to convert from Perl's internal format to a string of bytes.

  use Encode qw( encode );
  print(encode('UTF-8', $text));
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  or

  binmode(STDOUT, ':encoding(UTF-8)');
  print($text);
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• 259: PV = 0x18d73fc "?"\0
  238: PV = 0x18d7444 "\356"\0
  [download]

  The data is in iso-latin-1. This can't be the case, since "ă" is working.

• 259: PV = 0x18d736c "\304\203"\0
  238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0
  [download]

  The data is in UTF-8 already. Just print it out without re-encoding it.

• 259: PV = 0x18d74dc "\304\203"\0     <- Lack of [UTF8 ...]
  238: PV = 0x18d74dc "\356"\0
  [download]

  That means the data in your database is bad, or your database is returning bad data.

  The problem should be fixed at the source, but I think it's possible to fix it at this point too.

Update: Added second pair of output combinations, and fixed s/utf8/utf-8/

Thanks so much for looking into my problem!

What I get when I dump the database data is the third possibility: (in both cases: isolated "î" and "îã")

259: PV = 0x18d736c "\304\203"\0
238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0
That means it is UTF-8 all the time. So I've learned that the data from the base is correct. But the weird thing is: when I print the î to STDOUT (to get it to go to the browser) it is turned into xEE.... In a CMD box it shows as a Euro-sign (could be handy...) and in the browser it doesn't show but as a square, that is: Paletino Linotyope, the TTF that supports a big char repertoire, doesn't like it. If I look in the source of the HTML page FROM the browser it says î. But when it is accompanied by the ã, than it shows...

If I would make a workaround to change \xEE back to \303\256 (and all the rest), I cannot, at that time, see the difference in the two î's - its only in OUTPUTTING, so it seems, that the isolated î is offered at the browser/STDOUT in iso-latin-1 form... can you shed more light on this?

Printing shouldn't cause any conversion

$ perl -MDevel::Peek -MEncode -we'$x=encode("UTF-8", chr(259)); Dump($
+x); print $x' | od -b
SV = PV(0x819f9e0) at 0x814cc6c
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
  PV = 0x81698e0 "\304\203"\0   ---.
  CUR = 2                           \__ same
  LEN = 3                           /
0000000 304 203      --------------'
0000002

$ perl -MDevel::Peek -MEncode -we'$x=encode("UTF-8", chr(238)); Dump($
+x); print $x' | od -b
SV = PV(0x819f9e0) at 0x814cc6c
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
  PV = 0x81698e0 "\303\256"\0   ---.
  CUR = 2                           \__ same
  LEN = 3                           /
0000000 303 256      --------------'
0000002
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How do you know it's outputting xEE?

Are you using :encoding() on the STDOUT? You shouldn't with this data.

Are you using CGI's HTML generation methods (print h1(text))? They do some encoding too.