Unicode Functions

Introduction

Unicode Support.

Warning:

This extension is still in development and it isn't available to public yet.

Requirements

» ICU 3.4 or later is required.

Installation

First you should download and install ICU:

Example 2561. install ICU on Unix

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./configure --disable-threads --enable-extras --enable-icuio --enable-layout

make && make install

Then checkout latest PHP and configure it --with-icu-dir=<dir> option, where <dir> was the dir to where you installed ICU. You don't need to explicitly use this option if you install ICU to a standard location.

Runtime Configuration

The behaviour of these functions is affected by settings in php.ini.

Table 325. Unicode Configuration Options

Name	Default	Changeable	Changelog
unicode.fallback_encoding	NULL	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 6.0.0.
unicode.from_error_mode	"2"	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 6.0.0.
unicode.from_error_subst_char	"3f"	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 6.0.0.
unicode.http_input_encoding	NULL	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 6.0.0.
unicode.output_encoding	NULL	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 6.0.0.
unicode.runtime_encoding	NULL	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 6.0.0.
unicode.script_encoding	NULL	PHP_INI_ALL	Available since PHP 6.0.0.
unicode.semantics	"0"	PHP_INI_SYSTEM	Available since PHP 6.0.0.

For further details and definitions of the PHP_INI_* constants, see the Appendix I, php.ini directives.

Here's a short explanation of the configuration directives.

unicode.output_encoding string: Default encoding for output.

Predefined Constants

The constants below are defined by this extension, and will only be available when the extension has either been compiled into PHP or dynamically loaded at runtime.

Table 326.

constant	value	description
U_INVALID_STOP	0	stop at first invalid character
U_INVALID_SKIP	1	skip invalid characters
U_INVALID_SUBSTITUTE	2	replace invalid characters
U_INVALID_ESCAPE	3	escape invalid characters

Table of Contents

unicode_decode — Convert a binary string into a Unicode string
unicode_encode — Convert a unicode string in any encoding
unicode_get_error_mode — Get the error mode for strings conversions
unicode_get_subst_char — Get the substitution character for string conversion errors
unicode_semantics — Check whether unicode semantics is enabled
unicode_set_error_mode — Set the error mode for strings conversions
unicode_set_subst_char — Set the substitution character for string conversion errors

Code Examples / Notes » ref.unicode

hugo dworak post

If you are really interested in PHP 6 and its Unicode support you should read: http://www.zend.com/zend/week/php-unicode-design.txt (and in general http://www.zend.com/zend/week/) plus cvs/php6/README.UNICODE and cvs/php6/README.UNICODE-UPGRADES After you compile PHP 6, make sure that you have enabled unicode_semantics = on in php.ini (an old PHP 5 configuration file will not do as it does not provide those new Unicode-related options).