title: Issues with stored JSON encoded POSTs in MySQL
body: <p>I have a situation where after several years of use we are suddenly have some JSON-encoded values that are giving our Perl script fits due to backslashes.</p>
  
  <p>The issues are with accented characters like í and é. An example is Matí encoded as Mat\ud873.</p>
  
  <p>It is unclear what may have changed in the environment. PHP, Perl, and MySQL are involved.  The table collation is latin1_swedish_ci and this may have been changed by a co-worker screwing around.</p>
  
  <p>Does this ring any bells for anyone?</p>