## Matthias Apitz (guru@xxxxxxxxxxx): > my $text = "\xc3\xa4"; > print "text: ".$text."\n"; Your output is lying to you: you need a binmode(STDOUT, ':encoding(utf8)'), which will make this print "ä", and a utf8::decode($text), after which you get "ä". And when you pass that $text through DBD::Pg, it will still be an "ä". And when you change $text to "ä", it still works. Most other combinations will either fail with "\xc3\xa4" or "ä". Welcome to modern perl's handling of utf8. Cue "Everything is Fine" meme. Regards, Christoph -- Spare Space