I still don't really get it.

Can you repost your question without the funny special character, or is the special character a part of your problem?

If you need that special character, then it might be helpful to do a regex using hex codes. EG, " " =~ /\x020/, where 20 is the hex code for space, if I recall correctly. Figure out the hex code for that funny character, and use the hex code instead in your regex.

This will help if the problem you are having is due to the fact that the text editor you use to view/type interprets data differently from perl.