Use sed to fix weird symbols on tex file generated by publish function from miscellaneous Octave package

I have an Octave code that among other things outputs: (x - 5)⋅(x - 4)⋅(x - 3)⋅(x - 2) ─────────────────────────────── 24 When using publish function from Octave miscellaneous package, the corresponding latex code look like this: (x - 5)â‹…(x - 4)â‹…(x - 3)â‹…(x - 2) ─────────────────────────────── 24 I tried using sed to replace the weird characters: sed -i -e 's/â‹…/$\cdot$/g' file.tex sed -i -e 's/─/-/g' file.tex But nothing happens... Any help is appreciated.