I'm actually using Bot::BasicBot, which is a child class of poco-irc, but it shouldn't matter. When I'm getting my basic 'irc_public' events, when anyone says something in the channel, for some reason the irc 'color codes' that are produced with chr(3) and the like, getting sent as plain numeral 3. Also, some of the strings I'm getting have no spaces in them, even though my irc client (irssi) clearly displays them as having spaces. Anyone have any idea how can I strip out the color characters and get my spaces back?