# Rails cant display £

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-cant-display-a/87306>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 1, 2007, 3:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-cant-display-a/87306 "2007-03-01T15:59:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 3:59pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-cant-display-a/87306/1 "2007-03-01T15:59:34Z")

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Hi, under webrick the character, £, displays fine. Under apache it has  
some problems.

The £ displays fine on my administrator page, using the default  
generated code:

\<% for column in Product.content\_columns %\>

**\<%= column.human\_name %\>:** \<%=h @product.send(column.name) %\>

\<% end %\>

but when i construct my own view, and use:

\<%= @product.price\_prefix %\>\<%= sprintf("%0.2f",@product.price) %\>

the £ displays as ablack diamond and white question mark.

Whats that all about?

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**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-cant-display-a/87306/2 "2007-03-01T17:14:54Z")

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> the £ displays as ablack diamond and white question mark.
> 
> Whats that all about?

The pound sign should be the character entity: £

Various page encodings will probably mess with it in different ways  
otherwise.

Regards,  
Andrew

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 5:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-cant-display-a/87306/3 "2007-03-01T17:33:38Z")

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Thanks andrew, unfortunatly this is user entered content, i feel its not  
reasonable to ask them to enter &pound.

But i dont understand how it can be displayed correctly, and incorrectly  
on the same site, rails is doing something different when it renders  
these views.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 9:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-cant-display-a/87306/4 "2007-03-01T21:33:19Z")

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Thanks Jorge, unfortunately it had no effect.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/3bc359/32.png) [@jon](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jon)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2007, 7:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-cant-display-a/87306/5 "2007-03-01T19:22:08Z")

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Try put an ‘H’ when you output ruby code, eg:

\<%=h @product.price\_prefix %\> \<%=h sprintf("%0.2f",@product.price)%\>

\<%=h CONTENT %\>

will escape things for you.

Jorge

On 3/1/07, Jon [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/).
> 
> >

## –

Jorge S.