Test 1 - char is hard-coded in script:

use utf8;
use Devel::Peek;
$x="ü";         #<-- unicode char here
print Dump($x);
use bytes;
print length($x);
__END__
[download]

Output (ok):

SV = PV(0x15d5584) at 0x1a45848
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK,UTF8)
  PV = 0x15d91dc "\303\274"\0 [UTF8 "\x{fc}"]
  CUR = 2
  LEN = 3
2
[download]

Test 2 - char code is hard-coded in script:

use utf8;
use Devel::Peek;
$x="\x{00fc}";
print Dump($x);
use bytes;
print length($x);
__END__
[download]

Output (not ok):

SV = PV(0x15d5584) at 0x1a45848
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK)
  PV = 0x15d91dc "\374"\0
  CUR = 1
  LEN = 2
1
[download]

Test 3 - char is read from file which contains only one char (0x00cf) (0x00fc):

use utf8;
use Devel::Peek;
open(IN, "uni.txt");
binmode(IN,":utf8");
$x=<IN>;
chomp($x);
print Dump($x);
use bytes;
print length($x);
__END__
[download]

Output (ok):

SV = PV(0x15d5584) at 0x1a4583c
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK,UTF8)
  PV = 0x1a78eec "\303\274"\0 [UTF8 "\x{fc}"]
  CUR = 2
  LEN = 80
2
[download]

I could've sworn yesterday that "Test 4" doesn't work. Have to investigate a little more. What's up with "Test 2"?

Test 4 - Reading "directly" from STDIN (command prompt) was aparently wrong.

Thanks,

mrd

update: This is weird:

use utf8;
use Devel::Peek;

#$x="\x{00fc}";    #<-- not ok!!

#$x = "ü";        #<-- char above. ok

#$x="\x{0103}";    #<-- ok

#$x = "ă";        # char above. ok.

print Dump($x);

use bytes;
print length($x);
__END__
[download]

I edit my files (text & code) with vim 6.1. Have "encoding=utf-8".