> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://trizen.gitbook.io/perl6-rosettacode/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://trizen.gitbook.io/perl6-rosettacode/programming_tasks/r/read-a-file-character-by-character/utf8.md).

# UTF8

Raku has a built in method .getc to get a single character from an open file handle. File handles default to UTF-8, so they will handle multi-byte characters correctly.

To read a single character at a time from the Standard Input terminal; $\*IN in Raku:

```perl
.say while defined $_ = $*IN.getc;
```

Or, from a file:

```perl
my $filename = 'whatever';

my $in = open( $filename, :r ) orelse .die;

print $_ while defined $_ = $in.getc;
```