special character – encoding – outbounding

Here’s what I’m getting from the vendor:

OBX|28|TX|R^REPORT||AVA (VTI): 1.6 cm�||||||F

I’m running this through a route with a pre proc to swap the special character out and replace it with the numeral 2.  Here’s the relevent code for that:

 set x “�”

   regsub -all $x $msg {2} newmsg

This works in the testing tool so long as I keep the encoding setting set to ASCII.  It doesn’t work at all in real-time, though.  Here’s what’s getting delivered to my OB thread:

OBX|28|TX|R^REPORT||AVA (VTI): 1.6 cm�||||||F

Like it’s not being acted upon by the pre proc at all.

When I use SMAT to resend, though (keeping the encoding set to ASCII), here’s what I get:

OBX|28|TX|R^REPORT||AVA (VTI): 1.6 cm2||||||F

Which tells me the pre proc is working.

I’m getting out of my area/limits of expertise here, but I really need to fix this for my downstream app – these special characters are blowing the users out of their application when they try to inquire these reports.

Is there a way for me to determine what the vendor’s encoding is, and to convert that to ASCII?

Or, is something entirely different (not encoding) going on here?

Actually, even if the pre proc is doing nothing, then my questions are still relevent:  how can I determine what the vendor’s encoding is, and how can I make that character an ascii, or utf-8, numeral 2?

Thank-you much – that did the trick!