blah blah blah <E2><80><9C> blah blah blah <E2><80><9D> blah blah blah
This looks like a utf-8 encoding of the Unicode code points 0x201c and 0x201d, which correspond to opening and closing double quotes (see General Punctuation at the Unicode web site for more details).

You can convert the 3 raw bytes into a single Unicode character as follows: 

$str = "\xE2\x80\x9c";
use Encode;
$d = decode_utf8($str);

print "ok\n" if length($d)== 1 && $d eq "\x{201c}";

[download]
I don't know any general way converting obscure punctuation codes into simple near-equivalents.

Dave.

In reply to Re: character encoding question by dave_the_m
in thread character encoding question by MaskedMarauder

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.