Without seeing code, I can only speculate. However,   is an HTML encoding of a space, not a Unicode encoding. I *rarely* use Unicode, but I suspect that you're mixing up your symbol sets, missing or extra encode/decode calls, etc. I'd start by making sure you have a Unicode-compatible command window, and start your program in the debugger and look things over as you work your way through the program.

I'd also suggest reading the docs: perlunicode, perlunifaq, perluniintro, and/or perlunitut.

...roboticus