Hey mark!

 ml> yeah but your original didn't carry any indicator of what
 ml> character set was in use

utf-8 characters are easy to identify.  There is no character set as such and
anyone requiring an indicator obviously doesn't understand how utf-8 works. 
Putting a brain dead CHRS kludge doesn't work and never will for utf-8.

Life is good,
Maurice

... Don't cry for me I have vi.
--- GNU bash, version 4.4.12(1)-release (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu)