if I do 'more FOO.txt' I see: <93> abcde <94> if I view the same file with ptked or gedi, I see: \x{93} abcde \x{94}

That is the hint that your "<tags>" are not tags at all. The more program displays bytes with values greater than 127 as "<xx>" where "xx" is two hex digits.

As other monks mentioned on a previous question, this is very likely to be Microsoft "smart quotes" garbage if those are in the proper positions in the text, although standards declare the 0x93 and 0x94 codepoints to be in the C1 group of control characters. (So of course Microsoft would use them as graphic characters...) You probably want the old "demoronizer" tool; it was written specifically to fix this type of stupidity.

In reply to Re: PERL UNIX and strangeness and char conversion by jcb
in thread PERL UNIX and strangeness and char conversion by Anonymous Monk

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