This is harder to reproduce in a UTF-8 locale because multibyte characters do not exhibit this problem. Try this:
$ ascii $(printf '\xff') ASCII 0/-1 is decimal -01, hex ffffffff, octal 37777777777, bits 00000001: meta-^_ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]