#!perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use utf8;
use DBI;
use Devel::Peek;
use Encode;

my $dbh = DBI->connect('DBI:mysql:ling:127.0.0.1', 'test', 'test', { mysql_enable_utf8 => 1 });
die DBI::errstr() unless $dbh;

my $stmt = qq~SELECT raw FROM files WHERE file_id = ?~;
my $sth = $dbh->prepare($stmt);
$sth->execute(1);

my $row = $sth->fetchrow_hashref();
my $raw = $row->{raw};

Dump $raw;

$raw = decode('utf8', $raw);
Dump $raw;

$raw = encode('utf8', $raw);
Dump $raw;

exit(0);

__END__