utf8 characters

Hello -

We are using the utf8 pragma to convert latin
characters from an input file to utf8 characters to
insert into the database.  This is how we are using
it:

use utf8;
my $name =~ tr/\0-\xff//UC;

I'm getting 2 errors:  

1)  Malformed utf8 character at line 72...

    (this is the line that has the tr///UC; statement)

2)  When we do an update statement to the database
with the converted $name variable, there is an SQL
error.  We are using a utf8 compliant informix DB. 
The update statement looks like:

update table_name set name=$name where id=$id

The error (-202) says that there is an invalid
character.  

Are we using the correct format for using utf8?  Is
the tr///UC statement correct?   Can anyone offer any
assistance? 

Thanks so much!

Jennifer


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• utf8 characters by j k