Hi, Thanks for the replies :) I was expecting an email response - so good thing I checked back to see if there were any replies :) I've tried:

sub GetAdvertsForLink {

    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use utf8;

    binmode STDOUT, ':encoding(UTF-8)';

    $_ = 'été';
    my $desc = "test 123 un été à Tanger. élargir elargir ete";

    $desc =~ s|\b\Q$_|<a href="url">$_</a>|sg;
    print "FOO" . $desc;

}
[download]

You can see this in operation here: http://www.sudimedia.com/cgi-bin/link/page.cgi?g=Detailed%2F3.html;d=1 The problem now seems: 1) Its doesn't link at all 2) The charachters come up as weird charachters (in FF), and blank spaces in IE 7) If this is any help - the whole function is:

#<%Plugins::SponsorText::GetAdvertsForLink($Description,$category_id)%
+>
sub GetAdvertsForLink2 {

    use locale; 

    my $desc   = $_[0];
    my $link_id = $_[1];

    my $cat_tbl = $DB->table('CatLinks');
       $cat_tbl->select_options('LIMIT 1');

    my $cat_id = $cat_tbl->select( ['CategoryID'] , { LinkID => $link_
+id } )->fetchrow;

    my $cond = new GT::SQL::Condition;
       $cond->add('CatIDs','LIKE',"%,$cat_id,%");
       $cond->add('CatIDs','LIKE',"%,$cat_id");
       $cond->add('CatIDs','LIKE',"$cat_id,%");
       $cond->add('CatIDs','LIKE',"$cat_id");
       $cond->bool('OR');

    my @words;
   
    print $IN->header;

#  print qq|GOT CAT ID: $cat_id|;

#   use Unicode::MapUTF8 qw(to_utf8 from_utf8 utf8_supported_charset);
+ 

   my $sth = $DB->table('SponsorLinkText')->select( $cond ) || die $GT
+::SQL::error;
   while (my $hit = $sth->fetchrow_hashref) {

        my (@words) = split /,/, $hit->{Words};
        $hit->{Target} ||= '_blank';
        foreach (@words) {

           print qq|Looking for "$_" in "$desc" <br />\n|;


          if ($hit->{TheText}) {
            $desc =~ s|\b$_|<a href="$hit->{LinkURL}" title="$hit->{Th
+eText}" target="$hit->{Target}">$_</a>|sg; 
          } else {
            $desc =~ s|\b$_|<a href="$hit->{LinkURL}" target="$hit->{T
+arget}">$_</a>|sg;
          }
        }
   }

   return $desc;
}
[download]

Its for a program called Gossamer Links. Basically, this is how it works: 1) Grabs entries from the SponsorLinkText table, and gets the words to link/the link itself, and a few other bits of info 2) Split the words up - and then does:

        foreach (@words) {

           print qq|Looking for "$_" in "$desc" <br />\n|;


          if ($hit->{TheText}) {
            $desc =~ s|\b$_|<a href="$hit->{LinkURL}" title="$hit->{Th
+eText}" target="$hit->{Target}">$_</a>|sg; 
          } else {
            $desc =~ s|\b$_|<a href="$hit->{LinkURL}" target="$hit->{T
+arget}">$_</a>|sg;
          }
        }
[download]

(which basically links the words to their appropriate letters - at least in theory =)) TIA for any more suggestions. Andy