utf8 questions.

Hi,
I am using perl-5.8.6 on z/OS.
1) What is the BOM on z/OS ? Basically, I cant print the chars "\xFE\xFF". Even though \xFE is defined as Latin Capital Letter U with Acute, the char doesnt display. Also, \xFF isnt defined.

2) What is the difference between the utf8::encode and utf8::upgrade routines ?
e.g. $a = 'hello';
utf8::upgrade($a);

$a = "\xFE\xFF";
utf8::encode($a);

Should I use 'encode' when the scalar contains bytes and I need to convert those bytes into utf8 bytes (as in byte representation in unicode) ?
And use 'upgrade' when the scalar contains a normal string that I want to convert to a utf8 string of characters ?

Thanks in advance,
Rajarshi.

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