Replace utf8 character in a certain position of a string

[filoaman]

I have a utf8 string and I'm trying to replace some of the utf8 charachters with equivalent "plain latin characters" in certain positions of the string.

In this test i try to replace the first " î " character with " i ".

I found that the position in the string for the utf8 chracter i like to replace is 2. So i excecute substr_replace but i get a strange result.

Here is the code:

$str="Thîs îs ã ütf8 strîng";
// try to replace the first " î " (position #2)

$str = substr_replace($str, "i", 2, 1);
// i get this "Thi�s îs ã ütf8 strîng

Any ideas?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

[cataiin]

http://ca3.php.net/manual/en/function.iconv.php

[filoaman]

http://ca3.php.net/manual/en/function.iconv.php

 

Thank you for your answer. I read the material but really i can't find how this can solve my problem.

The material is about "conv" function which "Convert string to requested character encoding".

In my case i don't want to convert the encoding, i just want to replace a certain character of a string.

Do i need to convert the encoding? 

[cataiin]

<?php
$text = "Thîs îs ã ütf8 strîng";
$replace = array(
	'i' => array('î'),
	'a' => array('ã'),
	'u' => array('ü')
	);
foreach ($replace as $changed => $initial)
{
	$text = str_replace($initial, $changed, $text);
}
echo $text;
?>

iconv example:

<?php
$text = "Thîs îs ã ütf8 strîng";
echo iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT", $text);
?>

But this will remove diacritics, and is not what you want. Use first code, sorry. Edited September 12, 2013 by cataiin

[filoaman]

<?php
$text = "Thîs îs ã ütf8 strîng";
$replace = array(
	'i' => array('î'),
	'a' => array('ã'),
	'u' => array('ü')
	);
foreach ($replace as $changed => $initial)
{
	$text = str_replace($initial, $changed, $text);
}
echo $text;
?>

 

This will replace ALL characters. i only want to replace CERTAIN characters in certain positions of the sting, not all the characters. 

[kicken]

 

$str = substr_replace($str, "i", 2, 1);
// i get this "Thi�s îs ã ütf8 strîng

Any ideas?

 

$str = substr_replace($str, "i", 2, 2);

If you read about the UTF8 encoding, you'll notice that a single character can be stored as anywhere from 1 to 6 bytes. In the case of î, it is using 2 bytes so you need to use a length of 2 in your substr_replace.

[filoaman]

Yes, this do the job! I search for an on-line source to check the byte length  of all my utf8 characters i like to replace (thanks goad all of them are 2 bytes, so i don't have to make different routine for every character) and the problem solved.

Thank's kicken.

[requinix]

mb_substr can worry about the byte encoding for you. No mb_substr_replace() though.

$str = mb_substr($str, 0, 2, "UTF-8") . "i" . mb_substr($str, 3, null, "UTF-8");