use Text::Iconv;
$converter = Text::Iconv->new("fromcode", "tocode");
$converted = $converter->convert("Text to convert");
http://perldoc.perl.org/Encode/Guess.html
# if you are sure $data won't contain anything bogus
use Encode;
use Encode::Guess qw/euc-jp shiftjis 7bit-jis/;
my $utf8 = decode("Guess", $data);
my $data = encode("Guess", $utf8); # this doesn't work!
# more elaborate way
use Encode::Guess;
my $enc = guess_encoding($data, qw/euc-jp shiftjis 7bit-jis/);
ref($enc) or die "Can't guess: $enc"; # trap error this way
$utf8 = $enc->decode($data);
# or
$utf8 = decode($enc->name, $data)