use utf8;                  # upgrades your strings
my $city = "Sprîngfíèld";
binmode(STDOUT, ":encoding(utf-8)");
print $city, "\n";


# use decode_utf8() when reading from e.g. a file
# alternatively, see the binmode() call above
use Encode 'decode_utf8';
my $input_raw = <STDIN>;
my $input = decode_utf8($input_raw);
print $input, "\n";