Here's a shortened version of a method I have used in the past:

my @names = qw/Árni Óli Þorgeir Ýr Ægir Þór /;
my @names = fix_chars(@names); 
print "$_\n", for @names;

sub fix_chars
{
for (@_) 
    { 
    tr/ÁÐÉÍÓÚÝÖáðéíóúýö/ADEIOUYOadeiouyo/; 
    s/Þ/Th/; 
    s/Æ/Ae/; 
    s/þ/th/; 
    s/æ/ae/;
    s/\W/_/g; # Throw away any remaining non-word chars
    push @ok,$_;
}
return @ok;
}

[download]

This is intended for translating Icelandic into international.

It uses transliteration to substitute single characters and substitution to fix the double letters.

You can of course decide for yourself what characters you will allow and disallow.

--
Regards,
Helgi Briem
helgi AT decode DOT is

In reply to Re: Foreign language characters... by helgi
in thread Foreign language characters... by meetn2veg

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.