Yes.

>perl -le"use open ':std', ':encoding(cp850)'; use if $ARGV[0], 'local
+e'; print sort 'a', chr(0xE1), 'b'" 0
abá

>perl -le"use open ':std', ':encoding(cp850)'; use if $ARGV[0], 'local
+e'; print sort 'a', chr(0xE1), 'b'" 1
aáb
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(Replace cp850 with the proper encoding for your console.)

You have a few problems:

• "á" (English: "a with acute accent", French: "a avec accent aigu") is Unicode character E1, not 9E.

• You wrote use local; instead of use locale;

• /a..zA..Z/ means

  1. "a"
  2. followed by a character other than "\n"
  3. followed by a character other than "\n"
  4. followed by "z"
  5. followed by "A"
  6. followed by a character other than "\n"
  7. followed by a character other than "\n"
  8. followed by "Z"

  You meant /[a-zA-Z]/

• Perl ranges and character class ranges don't use alphabetical order.

• French doesn't use "á".

The solution is to use POSIX or Unicode properties.

>perl -le"my $s = chr(0xE1); print $s =~ /\p{Alpha}/ ?1:0"
1

>perl -le"my $s = chr(0xE1); print $s =~ /[\p{Alpha}]/ ?1:0"
1

>perl -le"my $s = chr(0xE1); utf8::upgrade($s); print $s =~ /[[:alpha:
+]]/ ?1:0"
1
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From the documentation, it seems to me the following should also work, but they don't:

>perl -le"use feature 'unicode_strings'; my $s = chr(0xE1); print $s =
+~ /[[:alpha:]]/ ?1:0"
0

>perl -le"use 5.012; my $s = chr(0xE1); print $s =~ /[[:alpha:]]/ ?1:0
+"
0
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Update: Fixed c&p mistake in char class.
Update: Inserted Problem #1.
Update: Oops, I seem to have forgotten to include the solution. Added.