Re^2: Trouble with Perl MySQL Arabic

[rminner]

i agree with graff, that it's probably a problem that ocurrs while recoding data between charsets. It might fail at either of the two points: reading or writing.
You should try to determine which charset the data ist you get from your dbi call. It might be correctly converted to utf8, or erroneously be treated as utf8 even though it isn't.
If it is converted to utf8 correctly, then an explicit recode might be required for writing back the data (utf8 to cp1256).
If it reads the input data as correct unicode data, it might also be that the viewer you are using is only showing questionmarks, because you inserted unicode data and the viewer can't handle it.
Check the codepage of the data you are getting and the codepage you want to write it back with. Judging by your problem it seems to be required that you recode your data at least once, and for that you'll have to know the input codepage and the desired output codepage.