I hope this makes sense
Perl version 5.8.4 on Linux I retrieve the text from a URL by using WWW::Mechanize.
The raw text has   in it. By using
my $result = $mech->content(format => 'text'); it looks like the the   is getting replace with 0xa0 (or octal 240). My goal is just to get plain old 7 bit ASCII, where all 'spaces' should be 0x20.

Now for the fun part, in the script if I uncomment the lines

    use encoding 'latin1';
    $result .= "";
[download]

I get what I want, but why the need for appending a empty string to $result ?

Or better asked, what should I be doing in the first place ?
======================================================

#!/usr/local/bin/perl
 
use warnings;
use strict; $|++;
 
use WWW::Mechanize;
 
#use encoding 'latin1';
#use encoding 'ascii';
#use encoding 'UTF-8';
 
my $mech = WWW::Mechanize->new();
 
my $url = "http://www.undeerc.org/wind/winddb/top.asp?TableName=tblDee
+rtrailCO";
 
$mech->get( $url );
 
print "1" x 70, "\n";
print "|", $mech->content, "|\n";
       
my $result = $mech->content(format => 'text');
$result =~ s/[\r\n]//g;
 
print "2" x 70, "\n";
print "|$result|\n";
 
#$result .= "";
$result =~ s/\s+/ /g;
 
print "3" x 70, "\n";
print "|$result|\n";
[download]

======================================================