Is -C useless?

[Philip Skinner]

On Thu, 2008-09-11 at 13:11 +0100, Paul LeoNerd Evans wrote:
> Consider the following:
> 
>   #!/usr/bin/perl -COL
> 
>   print "Hello w\xe9rld\n";
> 
>   $ perl test.pl 
>   Too late for "-COL" option at test.pl line 1.
> 
> WTF?? If that's "too late", where else can I put it?
> 
> If I remove it from the file:
> 
>   $ perl -COL test.pl
>   Hello wérld
> 
> But of course now STDOUT isn't UTF-8.
> 
>   $ perl test.pl
>   Hello w�ld
> 
> This can be fixed by:
> 
>   #!/usr/bin/perl
> 
>   binmode STDOUT, ":utf8" if $ENV{LANG} =~ m/\.UTF-8$/;
> 
>   print "Hello w\xe9rld\n";
> 
>   $ perl test.pl
>   Hello wérld
> 
> But of course, this is the exact behaviour that -COL is supposed to
> provide; and yet is "too late" by the shebang time.. Yet, clearly not
> because I can do it even later at runtime.
> 
> Can anyone offer any insight here?
> 

Maybe:

chmod 755 test.pl
./test.pl

?