ok so the light is spreading. And my question needs refinement. I was hoping to make it a simple question for the readers out there:
Filemaker pro exports a tab-delimited with quotes file from my client's database. The columns use all sorts of foreign characters (accented e's, u's, leaning single and double quotes, cent signs, etc). I want to convert the leaning quotes to regular quotes, (after i split the file correctly by columns and rows). My first post about the cent sign example does not indicate the slanting quotes problem.
My previous solution involved a flat text file with all the special characters. When i compared my text to a slanted single quote (backtick?) i got a regex error. I tried slashing it and q'ing it a couple of different ways to no avail. Still get the regex error.