You are basically saying that when you execute these two lines:

            $ba = "cleartool rmtype –rmall lbtype:$labelnew";
            #121#print "$ba";
[download]

you get this output (assuming that $labelnew contains LABEL):

cleartool rmtype ūrmall lbtype:LABEL
[download]

The simple answer is: That cannot happen!. But since you're here asking, you've obviously seen it happen, so the question is how could that come about.

The only possibility that comes to mind is that the editor you are using has somehow encoded a unicode character within your source file that displays as '-', but when interpreted as ascii (or roman1 or whatever codepage is selected on your terminal where you are viewing the output), it appears as the accented character you see there.

To check that hypothesis, I viewed the source of your post in my editor and what I found is that the '-' character shown in your post above, is actually a unicode multibyte character. I tried to paste a copy of what I see here, but once it has been through the process of being pasted in my browser, uploaded to PM, stored and retrieved through their DB and re-displayed, it looks like an ordinary '-' again.

So, my suggestion is this.

1. Go into the source file in your editor and delete the 3 characters ' -r' in that line and save the file and exit the editor (completely).
2. Re-start the editor and re-load the source file and re-type those 3 characters.
3. Save it and re-run the program.

With luck the problem will have "gone away". If not, sorry to have wasted your time.

(Are you using Word as your source editor? If not, which editor are you using?)