PHPDeveloper.org http://www.phpdeveloper.org Up-to-the Minute PHP News, views and community en-us Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:13:04 -0500 30 <![CDATA[Dokeos Blog: mbstring vs iconv]]> http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/10034 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/10034 In this post on the Dokeos blog, there's a comparison of the mbstring function and the iconv library as it pertains to their use on multi-byte strings.

I was wondering today why use mbstring rather than iconv in Dokeos, and honestly I didn't remember exactly why I had chosen mbstring in the past, but finding information about the *differences* between the two. [...] Searching a bit more, I found a PPT presentation from Carlos Hoyos on Google.

Essentially, it boils down to how the library is integrated - mbstring is bundled and iconv is pulled from an external source. So, if you're looking for maximum portability, he recommends mbstring.

]]> Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:18:08 -0500 <![CDATA[SitePoint PHP Blog: Living Dangerously with PHP and UTF-8]]> http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4457 http://www.phpdeveloper.org/news/4457 this new post on the SitePoint PHP Blog today, Harry looks at why it's "living dangerously" to use PHP with UTF-8.

Quick oneā€"knocked up a list of "dangerous" functions and functionality in PHP, in relation to the use of UTF-8, available at http://www.phpwact.org/php/i18n/utf-8. These are for a "default" PHP setup without the mbstring overloading or PHP6 (where charset problems "magically vanish" ;) ).

This follows on from (unfinished) stuff here on charsets (tending towards UTF-8), which should help explain some of this.

He also notes that you can't rely on mbstring to be there, so he offers an alternative...]]> Wed, 07 Dec 2005 07:45:38 -0600