Output on TTY with - ENCODING set - binmode set (TT expects utf8 for input and produces uft8 output) $ perl tt.pl Var = abcdef 6 # prints 6 fööbä # prints "fööbä" fööb # prints "fööb" ================================== Output with - ENCODING set - binmode NOT set (TT reads UTF8 properly, calculates correctly, but produces iso-8859-1 for output) $ perl tt.pl Var = abcdef 6 # prints 6 f??b? # prints "f??b?" f??b # prints "f??b" ================================== Output with - ENCODING NOT set - binmode NOT set (TT expects iso-8859-1, gets UTF8 and uses it without conversation, calculations are incorrect due to false expectations of TT, TT outputs as ISO-8859-1 without conversation thus printing the UTF8 chars correctly "by accident") $ perl tt.pl Var = abcdef 9 # prints 6 föö # prints "fööbä" fö? # prints "fööb"