mb_internal_encoding

(PHP 4 >= 4.0.6, PHP 5)

mb_internal_encoding — Set/Get internal character encoding

Description

mixed mb_internal_encoding ([ string $encoding = mb_internal_encoding() ] )

Set/Get the internal character encoding

Parameters

encoding: encoding is the character encoding name used for the HTTP input character encoding conversion, HTTP output character encoding conversion, and the default character encoding for string functions defined by the mbstring module.

Return Values

If encoding is set, then Returns TRUE on success or FALSE on failure. If encoding is omitted, then the current character encoding name is returned.

Examples

Example #1 mb_internal_encoding() example


<?php
/* Set internal character encoding to UTF-8 */
mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");

/* Display current internal character encoding */
echo mb_internal_encoding();
?>

Notes

Note: The internal encoding or the character encoding specified by mb_regex_encoding() will be used as the character encoding for this function.


Especially when writing PHP scripts for use on different servers, it is a very good idea to explicitly set the internal encoding somewhere on top of every document served, e.g.



mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");



This, in combination with mysql-statement "SET NAMES 'utf8'", will save a lot of debugging trouble. 



Also, use the multi-byte string functions instead of the ones you may be used to, e.g. mb_strlen() instead of strlen(), etc.

mortoray at ecircle-ag dot com
27-May-2005 06:10


To previous example, the PHP notes don't appear to support umlauted characters so there are question marks  (?) there instead of what should be umlauated oue.  Just substitute any high-order/accented character to see the effect.

mortoray at ecircle-ag dot com
27-May-2005 01:58


Be aware that the strings in your source files must match the encoding you specify by mb_internal_encoding.  It appears the Parser loads raw bytes from the file and refers to its internal encoding to determine their actual encoding.



To demonstrate, the following outputs as espected when the /source/ file is Latin-1 encoded:



<?php

    mb_internal_encoding("iso-8859-1");

    mb_http_output( "UTF-8" );

    ob_start("mb_output_handler");



    echo "���<br/>";



    ?>���



Now, a typical use of mb_internal_encoding is shown as follows.  Make the change to "utf-8" but leave the /source/ file encoding unchanged:



<?php

    mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");

    mb_http_output( "UTF-8" );

    ob_start("mb_output_handler");



    echo "���<br/>";



    ?>���



The output will just show the <br/> tag and no text.



Save the file as UTF-8 encoding and then the results will be as expected.

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Last updated: Fri, 20 Nov 2009