The quick and dirty way to solve this is the following: -Create an excel file, say 'Characters.xlsx' -On the first column put on each row every one of the characters that give you problem -read this file with perl and store each character in a variable -whenever you need in your code to use this, use the variables you have stored when reading this excel file

 use Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX;
my $infile='Characters.xlsx';
my @funny_characters=();
my $parser = Spreadsheet::ParseXLSX->new( ); 
my $workbook = $parser->parse($infile);  
  for my $worksheet ( $workbook->worksheets() ) {
    my ( $row_min, $row_max ) = $worksheet->row_range();

      
my $row=0;
 while($row<=$row_max){
my $W=$worksheet->get_cell( $row,0);#assuming all funny characters on 
+the first column
my $val='';
if( $W){$val=$W->value(); }
push @funny_characters,$val;
$row++;
                       } 
                                                    }
#so at the end, @funny_characters[0] will have the  first funny charac
+ter, funny_characters[1] the second in your Characters.xlsx file and 
+so on
<\code>
If you want to do something with those funny characters, you say
<code> if($mytext=~/$funny_characters[0]/){.....}
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