Redirect it's output to file and see that file with your browser(Firefox or something). You can know wheter it is really troubled string or it is a problem of application that you are using( terminal, excel .. and so on).

Documents for encoding ... they are not so long documents.
perlunitut 6 pages Very very short overview for unicode in perl + FAQ.
The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!) 8 pages About Charcter Set, Code Page, Unicode itself. Short History of Unicode.
perluniintro 12 pages This is the first thing to read (I think).
Character Encodings in Perl 7 pages all-in-one doc for encoding. Written by German Author.
perlunicode 20 pages Main document of perl's unicode. Through and precise, or too much for beginner.
Perl Programming/Unicode UTF-8 15 pages This document explains internal encoding of Perl (N8CS, utf-8) and also describe other problems. When you stumbled with 0x80-0xFF problem, this document explains the reason.

In reply to Re: Unable to retreive unicode characters in perl 5.10.x by remiah
in thread Unable to retreive unicode characters in perl 5.10.x by sathya_myl

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