Posted by still me on 10/15/07 14:53

On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 03:18:38 -0700, Andy Dingley
<dingbat@codesmiths.com> wrote:

>No, characters in a UTF-8 encoding interpreted by a tool using non-
>UTF-8 encoding will generally generate garbage characters that are
>still displayable (the tool thinks that it received two good
>characters, they just don't mean anything). Typically it's a pair of
>characters, the first of these is some variant of an accented
>"A" (they won't all be, but if you see lots of spurious "A"s on a
>page, look to UTF-8).

What's confusing me is that these same characters are present in the
HTML page that returns from Paypal via a standard FORM/POST as when I
simulate that with my CGI call. However, they only display in the
browser as the accented A on the page from the CGI; they don't show up
at all on the FORM/POST page. I've checked at the hex level and it's
definitely the same character so there's no difference there.

Any thoughts as to what would cause these characters to display on
screen in one case but not in the other? Would overriding the encoding
spec with something else help with the problem?

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