One more take on this just for completeness. Normalise the string by decoding twice and then do the replacement. 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use HTML::Entities;

my $line = qq{” 3”};
my $decode_1 = decode_entities $line;
my $decode_2 = decode_entities $decode_1;

print qq{$line\n};
print qq{$decode_1\n};
print qq{$decode_2\n};

$decode_2 =~ s/\x{201D}/'/g; #'

print qq{$decode_2\n};

[download]
Wide character in print at C:\perm\dev\_new.pl line 12.
Wide character in print at C:\perm\dev\_new.pl line 13.
” 3”
” 3”
” 3”
' 3'

[download]
The symbols here are the double quotes and the warnings are as expected.

I have a general rule of thumb: decode often (it doesn't hurt), encode ONCE (or your life will be a misery and you'll have strings of junk like the one you had). :-)

In reply to Re: quotes substitution by wfsp
in thread quotes substitution by Anonymous Monk

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