i agree with graff, that it's probably a problem that ocurrs while recoding data between charsets. It might fail at either of the two points: reading or writing.
You should try to determine which charset the data ist you get from your dbi call. It might be correctly converted to utf8, or erroneously be treated as utf8 even though it isn't.
If it is converted to utf8 correctly, then an explicit recode might be required for writing back the data (utf8 to cp1256).
If it reads the input data as correct unicode data, it might also be that the viewer you are using is only showing questionmarks, because you inserted unicode data and the viewer can't handle it.
Check the codepage of the data you are getting and the codepage you want to write it back with. Judging by your problem it seems to be required that you recode your data at least once, and for that you'll have to know the input codepage and the desired output codepage.

In reply to Re^2: Trouble with Perl MySQL Arabic by rminner
in thread Trouble with Perl MySQL Arabic by cormanaz

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.