query to find, then update characters in post titles & body

[gabeanderson]

According to the results I see when I use "Execute SQL Query" via vBulletin admin, I see "�," as shown in this screenshot (also attached above).

I assume that's an accurate representation of what's in the database.

I see the exact same character when I use this query, too:

select pagetext from post where postid=50736

[Lynne]

And can you do a search on that?

select * from post
where pagetext like '%�%'

[gabeanderson]

No, that's the problem.

[Lynne]

I'm afraid I don't know what to suggest then. Databases are just not my thing. Have you tried searching/posting over on vb.com?

[gabeanderson]

Thanks. Just posted there, too.

[briansol]

This is related to your browser (render) and the charset of the document.

the actual character (diamond) is NOT in your database. It's a symbol such as (C) for copyright instead of its proper html entitiy.

There's no good way to look for these.

I'd suggest going back to ISO-8859-1

[gabeanderson]

Thanks, Brian. I see what you mean now when I review in other browsers.

However, if I switch back to ISO-8859-1, then I'm back to the same issue I was originally trying to address when I changed to UTF-8 (see attached).

It's this curly / smart quote. If I switch back to UTF-8, any way to find that character via a query?

Or can I address the issue with the source content / links that are causing this? We need those smart quotes since it's part of our product branding.

Thanks.

[gabeanderson]

FYI- I ended up switching back to ISO-8859-1, and changing the source content / link titles so that we don't have any smart quotes in the title tags since that seemed to be the root of this issue in the first place.