Not exactly on topic, but frequently when I'm dealing with lots of old and weird files and data with characters that are killing my scipts or causing other behavior, I just eliminate all the characters I do not need. Faster than trying to pinpoint which character is causing the problem. 
$string =~ s/[^A-Za-z0-9]//g;

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If all I need is letters and numbers.

In reply to Re: regexing for non-standard characters... by rethaew
in thread regexing for non-standard characters... by emmiesix

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