Seconding afoken here — if you do not know, find out!

Try the hexdump function from this sample: (lightly tested, hopefully correct)

hexdump-test.pl: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

# given: string of bytes
# return: hexdump of argument
sub hexdump ($) {
  use bytes;

  my @bytes = map {[$_, ord]} split //, shift;

  return '['.join(' ', map {sprintf('%02x', $_->[1])} @bytes).']'
    .'|'.join('', map { ($_->[1] >= 0x20 && $_->[1] < 0x7F)
                          ? $_->[0] : '.' } @bytes).'|'
}

use utf8;
my $text = q[search/¿Cuales son las partes de una cadena de conexión??
+scope];

print hexdump($text), "\n";

__END__

[download]

Sample output:

[73 65 61 72 63 68 2f c2 bf 43 75 61 6c 65 73 20 73 6f 6e 20 6c 61 73 
+20 70 61 72 74 65 73 20 64 65 20 75 6e 61 20 63 61 64 65 6e 61 20 64 
+65 20 63 6f 6e 65 78 69 c3 b3 6e 3f 3f 73 63 6f 70 65]|search/..Cuale
+s son las partes de una cadena de conexi..n??scope|

[download]

I am fairly sure that if hexdump dies, the string you gave it was definitely not UTF-8. :-)

In reply to Re^5: Text::CSV encoding parse() by jcb
in thread Text::CSV encoding parse() by slugger415

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.