--- /dev/null
+Cross posting on Stackoverflow http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28709936/perl-error-related-to-encode-pm
+
+I have the following software:
+
+Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS
+
+ $ uname -a
+ Linux XXX 3.13.0-45-generic #74-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jan 13 19:36:28 UTC 2015 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
+
+
+Perl 5.18:
+
+ $ perl -version
+
+ This is perl 5, version 18, subversion 2 (v5.18.2) built for x86_64-linux-gnu-thread-multi
+ (with 41 registered patches, see perl -V for more detail)
+
+and Encode.pm 2.49:
+
+ $ head -n 10 /usr/lib/perl/5.18/Encode.pm
+ #
+ # $Id: Encode.pm,v 2.49 2013/03/05 03:13:47 dankogai Exp dankogai $
+
+
+When I use [ikiwiki](https://packages.debian.org/experimental/ikiwiki), which is a package using Encode.pm, I got the following error:
+
+ $ ikiwiki --setup ~/wiki.setup
+ Cannot decode string with wide characters at /usr/lib/perl/5.18/Encode.pm line 176.
+
+Lines 166 - 180 of Encode.pm reads:
+
+ sub decode($$;$) {
+ my ( $name, $octets, $check ) = @_;
+ return undef unless defined $octets;
+ $octets .= '';
+ $check ||= 0;
+ my $enc = find_encoding($name);
+ unless ( defined $enc ) {
+ require Carp;
+ Carp::croak("Unknown encoding '$name'");
+ }
+ my $string = $enc->decode( $octets, $check );
+ $_[1] = $octets if $check and !ref $check and !( $check & LEAVE_SRC() );
+ return $string;
+ }
+
+Does any kind soul have idea how to fix this issue?