hashbangperl

..because I didn't include mysql utf8 cruft in a connection string in something.

Thing is, I've done tonnes of localisation, from parsing named entities in german, to dealing with misconfigured mysql databases, localising currency, numbers and dates to dealing with special cases of greek capitalisation in pattern matching.

So for future reference, if you're relying on connection strings client side, you're doing it wrong - that's brittle and will eventually fuck up when somebody forgets to do it or uses a dodgy my.cnf - instead force it at server side and don't risk messed up encoding : http://blog.oneiroi.co.uk/mysql/mysql-forcing-utf-8-compliance-for-all-connections/

You're welcome