Wide character in syswrite at /usr/share/perl/5.8/Net/Cmd.pm line 430

[kalliet]

Hello,

Does anyone know what this error message means?
"Wide character in syswrite at /usr/share/perl/5.8/Net/Cmd.pm line 430"

I have a script that processes a lot of html files.
I've tried to find where it happens in my code and I think the error happens on the line with the following information :
$minutes = `cat $abs_path/$link`;

It sometimes processes some html pages without troubles and on other pages my script is terminated with this error.
I know it has something to do with unicode, but when I open an html page where it goes wrong, I see no weird characters.

Anyone any idea as to how I can fix this?
thx in advance,
kalliet

[KevinADC]

It does have to do with unicode, but you should not be using this for simpy printing the lines of a file with perl:

$minutes = `cat $abs_path/$link`;

You should use perls open() function and read the file instead of shelling out to the cat command.

open (FH, "$abs_path/$link") or die "$!";
my $minutes = do {local $/; <FH>};#read all lines into a scalar (slurp-mode)
close FH;
print $minutes;