use strict; use warnings; use 5.020;
use utf8;
use HTML::Entities ();
use Devel::Peek;

my $s = HTML::Entities::decode_entities("ä");
Dump "⛄$s";
Dump $s;
utf8::upgrade($s);
say $s =~ /\xE4/;
Dump $s;
say $s =~ /\xE4/;