$ perl -MEncode -MJSON -e " print JSON->new->utf8(0)->pretty(1)->encode([ decode 'utf8', qq{\xFA\xFG} ]); " Wide character in print at -e line 1. [ "�\u000fG" ] $ perl -MEncode -MJSON -e " print JSON->new->ascii(1)->pretty(1)->encode([ decode 'utf8', qq{\xFA\xFG} ]); " [ "\ufffd\u000fG" ]