That should be 
utf8::decode(my $text = $binary)
    or die "Input is not valid UTF-8";

[download]

It works in-place.

In reply to Re^4: i18n/utf8 problem, 'utf8 "\xF8" does not map to Unicode' by ikegami
in thread i18n/utf8 problem, 'utf8 "\xF8" does not map to Unicode' by bcrowell2

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