Question

I am currently having trouble with results from the Amazon API.

The service returns a string with unicode characters: Learn Objective\xE2\x80\x93C on the Mac (Learn Series)

With Ruby 1.9.1 the string could not even been processed:

REXML::ParseException: #<Encoding::CompatibilityError: incompatible encoding regexp match (UTF-8 regexp with ASCII-8BIT string)>

...

Exception parsing

Line: 1

Position: 1636

Last 80 unconsumed characters:

Learn Objective–C on the Mac (Learn Series)

Answer 1

As the exception points, your string is ASCII-8BIT encoded. You should change the encoding. There is a long story about that, but if you are interested in quick solution, just force_encoding on the string before you do any processing:

s = "Learn Objective\xE2\x80\x93C on the Mac"
# => "Learn Objective\xE2\x80\x93C on the Mac"
s.encoding
# => #<Encoding:ASCII-8BIT>
s.force_encoding 'utf-8'
# => "Learn Objective–C on the Mac"