Yes but only if it's a character-string, i.e. the utf8 flag is set.

But the OP said the flag is not set.

edit

not sure what -CSD means.

update

got it perlrun

The -C flag controls some of the Perl Unicode features.


As of 5.8.1, the -C can be followed either by a number or a list of option letters. The letters, their numeric values, and effects are as follows; listing the letters is equal to summing the numbers.


        I     1   STDIN is assumed to be in UTF-8
        O     2   STDOUT will be in UTF-8
        E     4   STDERR will be in UTF-8
        S     7   I + O + E
        i     8   UTF-8 is the default PerlIO layer for input streams
        o    16   UTF-8 is the default PerlIO layer for output streams
        D    24   i + o