Somebody wrote:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Encode qw(encode decode);

my $enc = 'utf-8'; # This script is stored as UTF-8
my $str = "úlcera\n";

# Byte strings:
print ucfirst $str; # prints 'úlcera', ucfirst didn't have any effect.
[download]

Whoa, that’s never going to work! And you should (very very very almost) not ever need to be calling encode/decode yourself, either.

Honest, this is really very easy. Watch:

use utf8;
use strict;
use warnings;
use warnings FATAL => "utf8";
use feature "unicode_strings"; # or use v5.12 or superior
use open qw(:std :utf8);

print ucfirst("úlcera\n");
[download]

...very most assuredly does indeed print out Úlcera. Don’t go by appearances: trust only the numbers. Thus:

$ perl ultstertest
Úlcera

$ perl ulstertest | uniquote -x
\x{DA}lcera

$ perl ulstertest | uniquote -v
\N{LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U WITH ACUTE}lcera

$ perl ulstertest | uniquote -b
\xC3\x9Alcera
[download]

The outer pair of tests above risk only confusion; it is the inner pair that are wholly dispositive and convincing: trust the output of uniquote -v and uniquote -x to give you something you can actually read and depend on.

Like I said, just play it by the numbers.

--tom