http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=1046758


in reply to a new example

The simplest way to fix the problem is to use utf8::all: 
#!/usr/bin/perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8::all;

print "\xC4 and \x{0394} look different";

[download]

Returns:

Ä and Δ look different

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom