Perl, XML and Unicode 

use XML::Simple;
use Devel::Peek;

my $doc = XMLin(\*DATA);

Dump($doc->{euro});

__DATA__
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1' ?>
<doc>
  <euro>&#8364;</euro>
</doc>

• Output:

SV = PV(0x84f8298) at 0x84c225c
  REFCNT = 1
  FLAGS = (POK,pPOK,UTF8)
  PV = 0x84ea098 "\342\202\254"\0 [UTF8 "\x{20ac}"]
  CUR = 3
  LEN = 4