sub blah { $_ = shift; s/ä/ae/g; s/Ä/AE/g; s/ö/oe/g; s/Ö/OE/g; s/ü/ue/g; s/Ü/UE/g; s/ß/ss/g; $_ }

##</code><code>##

$tstr = 'abc äÄöÖüÜß test';

%subsTable = (
	'ä' => 'ae', 'Ä' => 'AE', 'ö' => 'oe', 'Ö' => 'OE',
	'ü' => 'ue', 'Ü' => 'UE', 'ß' => 'ss'
);
$notInSQL = qr{'|`|´|"|,|%|$};
$inSQL = qr{`|´|"|,|$};

sub blah { 
	my $str = shift; 
	my $regex = join "|", map quotemeta, keys %subsHash;
	print $regex,"\n";
	$regex = qr/$regex/;
	$str =~ s/($regex)/$subsHash{$1}/g;
#	if ($str =~ /^\s*(SELECT|INSERT|UPDATE|DELETE)/i ) { $str =~ s/$inSQL/ /g }
#		else { $str =~ s/$notInSQL/ /g };
#may be have to use tr/// here		
	return $str
};


print "orig : $tstr\n";
print blah($tstr)."\n";