sub utf8tolatin1 {
  ($_)=@_; 
  use utf8;
  tr/\0-\x{ff}//UC; #change utf8 to  Latin-1
  no utf8;
  return $_;
}

#converts from latin1 to utf8
sub latin1toutf8 {
  ($_)=@_;
  use utf8;
  tr/\0-\0xff//CU; #change  Latin-1 to utf8
  no utf8;
  return $_;
}