utf8_encode -- Encodes an ISO-8859-1 string to UTF-8
Description
string utf8_encode ( string data)
This function encodes the string data to UTF-8, and returns the encoded version. UTF-8 is a standard mechanism used by Unicode for encoding wide character values into a byte stream. UTF-8 is transparent to plain ASCII characters, is self-synchronized (meaning it is possible for a program to figure out where in the bytestream characters start) and can be used with normal string comparison functions for sorting and such. PHP encodes UTF-8 characters in up to four bytes, like this:
Table 1. UTF-8 encoding
bytes
bits
representation
1
7
0bbbbbbb
2
11
110bbbbb 10bbbbbb
3
16
1110bbbb 10bbbbbb 10bbbbbb
4
21
11110bbb 10bbbbbb 10bbbbbb 10bbbbbb
Each b represents a bit that can be used to store character data.
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