# Letters with accent marks

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letters-with-accent-marks/120455>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [November 17, 2007, 3:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letters-with-accent-marks/120455 "2007-11-17T03:16:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bigdaddy71](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/bbe5ce/32.png) [@bigdaddy71](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bigdaddy71)\
**Post date:** [November 17, 2007, 3:16am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/letters-with-accent-marks/120455/1 "2007-11-17T03:16:40Z")

</div>

Any ideas?

I have a textBox that users will be entering data into and most likely  
they will not bother to write the accent marks over the correct letters.  
When performing the search I need a way to look at the words in the  
database and say does it have a accent mark over it and if so ignore it  
and render it as a, e, i, o, u. I tried to copy and paste these letters  
with accent marks into the file in order to test for them but the  
program (putty) doesnt recognize them and renders a bunch of random  
letters.

Any idea how to test for i with an accent mark, a with an accent mark,  
etc…