# Searching for latin/umlaut characters in string **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [May 1, 2008, 10:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420 "2008-05-01T22:45:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 10:45pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/1 "2008-05-01T22:45:31Z")
Hi, Ive read up a bit about uicode strings and the issues with rails after i tried to save some data which contained an umlaut character. I got the following error below when searching for a name that contained the character é. Unclosed quotation mark after the character string ') Is there anyway to search a string for these types of characters and then ill decide what to do later?? Some sort of string method like scan or include?? JB ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2008, 10:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/2 "2008-05-01T22:56:50Z")
On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 10:45 PM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Ive read up a bit about uicode strings and the issues with rails after i > tried to save some data which contained an umlaut character. I got the > following error below when searching for a name that contained the > character é. > > Unclosed quotation mark after the character string ') Sounds like an encoding issue with the source code itself. Are you writing that “é” in the program? If yes, is your editor configured to write UTF8? ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 10:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/3 "2008-05-02T10:17:47Z")
Xavier N. wrote: > On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 10:45 PM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > wrote: > > > Ive read up a bit about uicode strings and the issues with rails after i > > tried to save some data which contained an umlaut character. I got the > > following error below when searching for a name that contained the > > character é. > > > > Unclosed quotation mark after the character string ') > > Sounds like an encoding issue with the source code itself. Are you > writing that “é” in the program? If yes, is your editor configured to > write UTF8? No the string is coming in via a csv file. ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 11:19am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/4 "2008-05-02T11:19:51Z")
John B. wrote: > Xavier N. wrote: > > > On Thu, May 1, 2008 at 10:45 PM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > > wrote: > > > > > Ive read up a bit about uicode strings and the issues with rails after i > > > tried to save some data which contained an umlaut character. I got the > > > following error below when searching for a name that contained the > > > character é. > > > > > > Unclosed quotation mark after the character string ') > > > > Sounds like an encoding issue with the source code itself. Are you > > writing that “é” in the program? If yes, is your editor configured to > > write UTF8? > > No the string is coming in via a csv file. str = “My cafe\xcc\x81 is good.” puts str if str.include?(“cafe\xcc\x81”) puts “yes” else puts “no” end ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 2:52pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/5 "2008-05-02T14:52:01Z")
Xavier N. wrote: > On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:17 AM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > wrote: > > > Xavier N. wrote: > > > > > Sounds like an encoding issue with the source code itself. Are you > > > writing that “é” in the program? If yes, is your editor configured to > > > write UTF8? > > > > No the string is coming in via a csv file. > > Is the CSV file in UTF8? Its Ansii as far as i can tell. Its actually coming from an excel spread sheet and the user then “saves as” comma separted csv. Then its import to the application wher i am running into the problem. ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 11:53am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/6 "2008-05-02T11:53:13Z")
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:17 AM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Xavier N. wrote: > > > Sounds like an encoding issue with the source code itself. Are you > > writing that “é” in the program? If yes, is your editor configured to > > write UTF8? > > No the string is coming in via a csv file. Is the CSV file in UTF8? ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 3:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/7 "2008-05-02T15:22:25Z")
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 2:52 PM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > No the string is coming in via a csv file. > > > > Is the CSV file in UTF8? > > Its Ansii as far as i can tell. Its actually coming from an excel > spread sheet and the user then “saves as” comma separted csv. Then its > import to the application wher i am running into the problem. If the CSV is ANSII, and the Ruby source code is ANSII, where is the “é” coming from? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 4:38pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/8 "2008-05-02T16:38:27Z")
Xavier N. wrote: > On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 2:52 PM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) > wrote: > > > > > No the string is coming in via a csv file. > > > > > > Is the CSV file in UTF8? > > > > Its Ansii as far as i can tell. Its actually coming from an excel > > spread sheet and the user then “saves as” comma separted csv. Then its > > import to the application wher i am running into the problem. > > If the CSV is ANSII, and the Ruby source code is ANSII, where is the > “é” coming from? 🙂 Here is an example of the csv file with the word below and how it is displayed. They are identical. It looks like the file is utf-8 after all. Müller ---
**Author:** ![johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@johnnybutler7](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/johnnybutler7)\ **Post date:** [May 2, 2008, 4:49pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/searching-for-latin-umlaut-characters-in-string/136420/9 "2008-05-02T16:49:36Z")
On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 4:38 PM, John B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > spread sheet and the user then “saves as” comma separted csv. Then its > > > import to the application wher i am running into the problem. > > > > If the CSV is ANSII, and the Ruby source code is ANSII, where is the > > “é” coming from? 🙂 > > Here is an example of the csv file with the word below and how it is > displayed. They are identical. It looks like the file is utf-8 after > all. No it is iso-8859-1. In that CSV “ü” is a single byte instead of two: fxn@feynman:~/tmp$ od -a testcsv.csv 0000000 M ? l l e r cr nl 0000010 fxn@feynman:~/tmp$ od -a testcsv\_utf8.csv 0000000 M ? ? l l e r 0000007 You’d need to fetch data from the CSV, change its encoding in memory with iconv, and work with the result. In general, when doing I/O like that you need to control every involved encoding to ensure everything matches.