> What am I missing?

use utf8 ?

You should dump your string to see what's inside, best inspected with Devel::Peek

Update

Tested on my mobile

$ perl
use utf8;
$string = "“can’t”";

$string =~ tr/“’”/"'"/;
print $string . "\n";
__END__
"can't"
$

[download]

Explanation

Without utf8 Perl is considering every string to be a byte string not a character string (the flag will be missing)

Your multibyte unicode character might look ok in your editor but Perl will try to transliterate individual bytes.

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery

In reply to Re: tr/// not working for replacment of curly quotes (use utf8) by LanX
in thread tr/// not working for replacment of curly quotes by nysus

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