Text Encoding

Encoding is the way characters are organized to hold a meaning while being transmitted, stored or manipulated.

Encoding applies to PHP scripts, which should be UTF-8 encoded, although it might support other formats.

Encoding applies to incoming and outgoing data.

Encoding operations are provided with ext/mbstring, ext/iconv and ext/intl extensions.

Encoding is also used for code : the source is encoded when it is transformed in an unreadable yet still executable form.

<?php
$text = "This is the Euro symbol '€'.";

echo 'Original : ', $text, PHP_EOL;
echo 'TRANSLIT : ', iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//TRANSLIT", $text), PHP_EOL;
echo 'IGNORE   : ', iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1//IGNORE", $text), PHP_EOL;
echo 'Plain    : ', iconv("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1", $text), PHP_EOL;

?>

Documentation

Related : Multibyte String, Iconv, Internationalization Functions