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Percentage symbols instead of accented letters - why?
Thread poster: Paul Dixon
Paul Dixon
Paul Dixon  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 20:49
Portuguese to English
+ ...
Jul 14, 2009

When I receive files I often get the text full of percentage symbols instead of accented letters. For example:

instru%C3%A7%C3%B5es%20especificas

The text should have read:

instruções específicas

On other occasions, I get Chinese symbols for accents, even in sites like Yahoo.

What is happening?
 
Noni Gilbert Riley
Noni Gilbert Riley
Spain
Local time: 01:49
Spanish to English
+ ...
Glad you asked Paul Jul 14, 2009

I've seen this so many times now that I hardly notice it, but you have restimulated my curiosity (up until then, it was a bit like when something doesn't work properly at home - you mean to fix it at first, but then get so used to it, you hardly even notice it - until you have guests coming to visit that is, which is why I am rejoicing in a recently fixed dripping cistern!)


Noni
 
Alex Lago
Alex Lago  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 01:49
English to Spanish
+ ...
coding Jul 14, 2009

More likely then not it I would say it has to do with the character set (Unicode, Windows, etc) you are using or the person sending you the file used, you need to open the file with the set they used.
 
Matt Petrowski
Matt Petrowski
United States
Member (2008)
English to Spanish
+ ...
URL/percent encoding Jul 14, 2009

This is the same encoding as used in URLs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding . You can decode this to a readable string using any of several online tools. I found this one searching Google for 'url decoder': http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/

Best regards,
... See more
This is the same encoding as used in URLs: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding . You can decode this to a readable string using any of several online tools. I found this one searching Google for 'url decoder': http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/

Best regards,
Matt Petrowski
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Percentage symbols instead of accented letters - why?






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