Cleaning text with function?

Currently I have a perl script that I use to cleanse text fields in a file
for use in our mainframe. I would like to do this as a function and bypass
using perl if possible. Is this possible? I do not have plperl installed
on the database due to server restrictions.
Example of current perl statement:

while (<>) { # Streams the corrected text back to the original file

s/¨/ /g; # Character replace
s/ª/ /g; # Character replace
s/`/ /g; # Character replace
s/¡/ /g; # Character replace
s/Ë/A/g; # Character replace
s/Ò/ /g; # Character replace
s/Ó/ /g; # Character replace
s/æ/E/g; # Character replace
s/ê/I/g; # Character replace
s/ì/I/g; # Character replace
s/ï/O/g; # Character replace

print; # this goes to the temp filehandle, ARGVOUT,
# not STDOUT as usual, so don't mess with it !
}

TIA

Patrick Hatcher
Macys.Com
Legacy Integration Developer