Perl Defaults to Binary IO 

Euro = €
use Devel::Peek;

open my $fh, '<', 'euro.txt' or die "open(euro.txt): $!";

my $data = <$fh>;

Dump($data);
SV = PV(0x814cb00) at 0x81a510c
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (PADBUSY,PADMY,POK,pPOK)
  PV = 0x817ba90 "Euro = \342\202\254\n"\0
  CUR = 11
  LEN = 80