mysql fields with gibberish, need cleaning

[menriquez]

hello, I inherited a project that has a mysql database that has large description fields that, due to an unfortunate prior import, has a bunch of gibberish chars in it.

i have been tasked to "clean up" the data, and tried a few fixes that i found on the net on the db side...none worked. so now i am going to write a "scrubber" in PHP or REGEX that parses the text and eliminates bad chars.

does anyone know of a script or snippet that performs this task?

- mark

[Jakotsu]

I don't know, but changing the table's collation wouldn't fix the screwed up chars back to normal?