[Catalyst] Re: decoding in core

[Neo [GC]]

Oh I forgot something... or more precisely, my boss named it while 
having a smoke. Maybe somewhat OT, but definetly interesting (maybe 
could be used to simplify the problem of double-enconding):

Does anyone know a _safe_ method to convert _any_ string-scalar to utf8?
Something like
anything_to_utf8($s)
, regardless if $s contains ascii, latin1, utf8, tasty hodgepodge or hot 
fn0rd, utf8-flag is set or not and is neither affected by full moon nor 
my horrorscope, _without_ doing double-encoding (there MUST be some way 
to determine if it already is utf8... my silly java editor can do it and 
perl makes difficult things at least possible).


I would greatly appreciate this philosophers stone and will send my hero 
a bottle of finest bavarian (munich!) beer called Edelstoff ("precious 
stuff" - tasty).


Greets and thanks!
Tom Weber