#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use open ':encoding(utf8)';

my $ofile = 'utf_issue.txt';
open(my $fh,'>', $ofile) or die "Error opening $ofile: $!\n";
binmode($fh, ":utf8");

my $x = 'FREIGHT – INTRASTATE';
print $fh $x, "\n";
print $fh pack('A20',$x), "\n";

##</code><code>##

###################################################################
# This subroutine pads 'txt' on the right to length 'len'.
###################################################################
sub mypack {
   my $len = shift;
   my $txt = shift;
   $len =~ s/^A//i;  # Remove 'A' that system "pack" function uses.
   return sprintf("%s%s",$txt, ' 'x(($len-length($txt))));
}