#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Encode qw(decode encode);
use Template;

my($a,$decoded);
#input bytes to $a
$a=`perl -CS -e "use utf8;print 'é'"`;

#decode it to character
$decoded=decode('UTF-8', $a);

#this will print replacement character to test_out1.html
my $t=Template->new();
$t->process("test.tmpl",{a=>$decoded},"test_out1.html");