I appreciate the help, zentara. I did install utf8::all and used it in the packages where I open/close files. Alas, it made no difference as far as output. I got the same character mangling as before. But I am sure the utf8::all module will come in handy. Thanks for mentioning it.

Regarding the decode suggestion, I based my usage on the Encode documention:

...to convert ISO-8859-1 data into a string in Perl's internal format:

$string = decode("iso-8859-1", $octets);
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This was just a 'Hail Mary' attempt; I am not at all convinced my input string is in octets, and when I precede this function with its mate that does a translation into octets, the output gets even more mangled.

When I get off work today, I will look into the other links you mentioned.

/dennis