Sets FILEHANDLE's system position in bytes using lseek(2). FILEHANDLE may be an expression whose value gives the name of the filehandle. The values for WHENCE are 0 to set the new position to POSITION; 1 to set it to the current position plus POSITION; and 2 to set it to EOF plus POSITION, typically negative.

Note the emphasis on bytes: even if the filehandle has been set to operate on characters (for example using the :encoding(UTF-8) I/O layer), the