use Encode;

sub digConvert
{
    our $val; local *val = \$_[0];

    if (ref $val eq 'HASH') {
        foreach (keys %$val) {
            digConvert($val->{$_});
        }
    } elsif (ref $val eq 'ARRAY') {
        foreach my $i (0 .. $#{$val}) {
            digConvert($val->[$i]);
        }
    } elsif (ref $val eq 'SCALAR') {
        digConvert($$val);
    } elsif (!ref $val && length $val) {
        # don't upset XML parser
        # problably more to come
        $val =~ s/&/&/g;
        $val =~ s/</&lt;/g;
        $val =~ s/>/&gt;/g;
        $val = Encode::encode_utf8($val);
    } else {
        ### something I missed?
    }
}