Unicode support in perl *is* broken.

If for no other reason than I cannot ignore it. Things that worked before it was added, no longer do. (And there are plenty of other reasons.)

If that doesn't make sense to you, re-read the thread. If it still doesn't make sense, then you've not read closely enough.

I might even agree with you that Perl's unicode support is somewhat less broken than in many other languages, but you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

The great thing about The Unicode Standard is that there are so many to choose from. Which makes the attempt to transparently support all of them, using an internal encoding that is none of them, heroic, but simply naive.