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