Invalid parsing of unicode in strings

[exaexa]

Hello,

we spotted a several .mat files that use unicode in strings, such as the one here:

https://github.com/SysBioChalmers/Fruitfly-GEM/blob/main/model/Fruitfly-GEM.mat

Strings in these files contain non-ascii characters such as α and β, unfortunately produce something like:

 "\x03-Est1"
 "\x03-Est10"
 "\x03-Est2"
 "\x03-Est3"
 "\x03-Est4"
 "\x03-Est5"
 "\x03-Est6"

(this is in the "genes" sub-array).

Is there any way to specify the decoding of strings or any other way to fix this?

Thank you!

-mk

cc: @htpusa @laurentheirendt