title: PHP - Can't remove strange character
body: <p>I'd really appreciate some help with this. I've wasted days on this problem and none of the suggestions I have found online seem to give me a fix.</p>
  
  <p>I have a CSV file from a supplier. It appears to have been exported from an Microsoft system.</p>
  
  <p>I'm using PHP to import the data into MySQL (both latest versions). </p>
  
  <p>I have one particular record which contains a strange character that I can't get rid of. Manual editing to remove the character is possible, but I would prefer an automated solution as this will happen multiple times a day.</p>
  
  <p>The character appears to be an interpretation of a “smart quote”. A hex editor tells me that the character codes are C2 and 92. In the hex editor it looks like a weird A followed by a smart quote. In other editors and Calc, Writer etc it just appears as a box. ﾒ</p>
  
  <p>I'm using mb_detect_encoding to determine the encoding. All records in the CSV file are returned as ASCII, except the one with the strange character, which is returned as UTF-8.
  I can insert the offending record into MySQL and it just appears in Workbench as a square.</p>
  
  <p>MySQL tables are configured to <code>utf-8 – utf8_unicode_ci</code> and other unusual UTF characters (eg fractions) are ok.</p>
  
  <p>I've tried lots of solutions to this...</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6723562/how-to-detect-malformed-utf-8-string-in-php">How to detect malformed utf-8 string in PHP?</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1401317/remove-non-utf8-characters-from-string">Remove non-utf8 characters from string</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9631299/removing-invalid-incomplete-multibyte-characters">Removing invalid/incomplete multibyte characters</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/6723562/how-to-detect-malformed-utf-8-string-in-php">How to detect malformed utf-8 string in PHP?</a></li>
  <li><a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1262038/how-to-replace-microsoft-encoded-quotes-in-php">How to replace Microsoft-encoded quotes in PHP</a></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>etc etc but none of them have worked for me.</p>
  
  <p>All I really want to do is remove or replace the offending character, ideally with a search and replace for the hex values but none of the examples I have tried have worked.</p>
  
  <p>Can anyone help me move forward with this one please?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong>:<br>
  Can't post answer as not enough reputation:<br>
  Thanks for your input. Much appreciated.<br>
  I'm just going to go with the hex search and replace:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$DodgyText = preg_replace("/\xEF\xBE\x92/", "" ,$DodgyText);
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I know it's not the elegant solution, but I need a quick fix and this works for me.</p>