replace all the specal text caricatures

[thehigherentity]

I want to make a function to replace all the specal text caricatures

what is the best way to go about it?

I thought about
[code]
$search // array of key symbols        
$replace // array of replacments

$newtext = preg_replace($search, $replace, $oldtext);
[/code]
only problem is when i started to look into this i found there is 100's of them

just incase my post isnt clear i mean replacing things like the following

‘ with its code
’ with its code
‚ with its code

etc etc etc

[poirot]

Simply use str_replace().

[a href=\"http://www.php.net/str_replace\" target=\"_blank\"]http://www.php.net/str_replace[/a]

[thehigherentity]

I actualy ended up using htmlspecialchars();

but i have a question

Is str_replace() fast enough to do so many changes ?
would there be a problem if i ran say 100 or so changes with str_replace()? i dont intend to do so but i am interested in knowing its limitations

[poirot]

AFAIK str_replace is good enough.

And also the last time I checked there were some weird bugs with PHP's native htmlspecialchars and htmlentities functions... I'd rather user my own.