my $buff=encode('UTF-8',$ldgm);				#internal char to utf-8 bytes
from_to($buff, 'UTF-8', 'Windows-1252'); 		#now buff converted into 1252 bytes
$buff=decode('Windows-1252', $buff);			#1252 bytes converted into internal char
print 'ret=' . encode('UTF-8', $buff);			#encode into UTF8 bytes and print