However, none of these techniques seems to be working for me.

How do you know? Consider ddumperBasic debugging checklist Basic debugging checklist item 4 

#!/usr/bin/perl --
use strict; use warnings;
use Data::Dump qw/ dd /;
use feature qw/ unicode_strings /;
my $uni = qq{\N{U+1000049} \N{U+2190}};
dd( $uni );
$uni =~ s{\N{U+1000049}}{\N{U+2190}}gx;
dd( $uni );
__END__
"\x{1000049} \x{2190}"
"\x{2190} \x{2190}"

[download]

Also, a step-by-step explanation of the Perl code generated by a2p for the gawk gsub function would be much appreciated as a teaching tool to help me learn perl.

Start with perlintro, perlrebackslash, perlrequick, and Re: calling awk one liner from perl

Learning perl from a2p is going to be though

In reply to Re: Global substitution of non-base-plane Unicode characters by Anonymous Monk
in thread Global substitution of non-base-plane Unicode characters by pjfarley3

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