if ($charset && (lc($charset) ne 'utf-8')) { if (!eval { $output = encode($charset, $output); }) { croak($!); } }
elsif ($charset && (lc($charset) eq 'utf-8')) { if (!eval { $output = encode('utf8', $output); }) { croak($!); } }

if ($charset && (lc($charset) ne 'utf-8')) { 
  eval { $output = encode($charset, $output); };
  croak($@) if $@;  
}
elsif ($charset && (lc($charset) eq 'utf-8')) { 
  eval { $output = encode('utf8', $output); };
  croak($@) if $@;
}

Unknown encoding 'utf-28' at lib1/module.pm line 142
 at X:\www\cgi-bin\script.pl line 57

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

package module;
use Carp qw(carp croak);
use Encode;

sub new {
        my $invocant = shift;
        my $class = ref($invocant) || $invocant;
        my $self = {};
        bless($self, $class);
        return($self);
}

sub test {
        if (!eval { encode('charset-das-es-nicht-gibt', 'text') }) {
                croak($@);
        }
}

1;

#!/usr/bin/perl -wT

use strict;
use warnings;

use lib '.';
use module;

my $module = new module;
$module->test();

1;

Unknown encoding 'charset-das-es-nicht-gibt' at module.pm line 18
 at X:\www\cgi-bin\script.pl line 10