If you want to use new feature of perl-5.8.0 and to read directly unicode data, you should tell to perl that your file is Unicode:

    open(my $fh,'<:utf8', 'anything');
    my $line_of_unicode = <$fh>;

    open(my $fh,'<:encoding(Big5)', 'anything');
    my $line_of_unicode = <$fh>;
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I got that code samples from perluniintro.pod, which is beautiful reading to start.

And yes, if you're not ready to move to perl-5.8.0 yet, then use Unicode::Map module to solve your task.

Courage, the Cowardly Dog.